Habitat effects on larval mortality in the forest tent caterpillar, Malacosoma disstria (Lepidoptera; Lasiocampidae)

Although various studies have been carried out on outbreak populations of Malacosoma disstria Huebn there is a paucity of work on between-outbreak populations because of the difficulty of locating the caterpillars. The authors present perliminary evidence which suggests that this difficulty may arise, in part, because between-outbreak populations are confined to wet lowland forest by differences in caterpillar mortality between wet and dry forest habitat.