Abstract: Investigating the correlation between herbivory intensity and number of leaves of individual seedlings can help us better understand the effects of food abundance on herbivory intensity at small scale. In this study, we compared the correlations between herbivory intensity and the number of leaves among seasons and plant species in a subtropical forest in Ailao Mountain, using linear mixed model and generalized linear mixed model. Across all the species, a significant Ushaped pattern was detected between the number of leaves and herbivory frequency (i.e., the ratio of the number of leaves suffered insect herbivory to the total number of leaves of a target individual) in September and May, but a humpshaped pattern in December. The number of leaves had a minor effect on herbivory intensity (i.e., proportion of leaf area damaged by insect) in all the seasons. At the species level, much more complicated results emerged, including monotonic increasing and decreasing trends, and U-shaped and hump-shaped patterns, although many species did not show a clear trend, indicating that the effect of leaf number on herbivory was species specific. The results would help us further understand the role of herbivorous insects in species coexistence and diversity maintenance of seedling communities in subtropical forests. Future studies of plant-herbivore interactions should consider the role of both species specificity and seasonal variation, as well as different herbivory indices.

Key words: insect herbivore, plant-animal interaction, non-monotonic, interspecific specificity.