Poster Speech

Ulmus or elm species and leaf miners.  Leaf miners are relatively harmless to trees but they can have an esthetic effect on trees if they are part of the landscape.  We selected three elm tree where vary along the phylogenetic tree of Elms, the Japanese, smooth and American, with the American being the outlier.  From there two trees from each species had 25 leaves collected from it and the number of leaf mines were counted as well as the number of aborted leaf mines, meaning the leaf miner died.  For our results, we looked at the total number of leaf mines as well as the proportion of those were aborted, the average leaf mine per leaf of each species and the crude death rate per a 1,000 population.  These results showed the highest rate of infestation in the American.  There were similarities in the data of Smooth and Japanese Elm.  Our sample size was very small to have a meaningful statistical analysis done therefore any results of the lab cannot fully support any theory but there are indications that phylogeny can affect the infestation of leaf miners in Elm species as well the their probability of aborting.  For future studies, we would like to expand the sample size of leaves collected as well see if the mortality of leaf miners is seasonal.