Do small leaves expand faster than large leaves, and do shorter expansion times reduce herbivore damage?

Leaves are most vulnerable to herbivory during expansion. We hypothesised t hat one factor favouring small leaves could be that smaller-leaved species have shorter expansion times and are therefore exposed to high levels of he rbivory for a shorter period than large leaves. In order to test this hypot hesis, leaf expansion time and leaf area loss were measured for 51 species from Sydney, Australia. Strong positive correlations were found between lea f length and area and leaf expansion time, confirming that small leaves do expand in a shorter time than large leaves. The amount of leaf area lost wa s highly variable (from 0.5 to 90% of total leaf area), but was significant ly related to both leaf expansion lime and log leaf area. The amount of lea f area lost was not significantly correlated with specific leaf area nor wi th the presence of distasteful substances in the leaves, but was lower on s pecies with hairy expanding leaves.