What version of JasperSoft Studio are you using. When you save the report in JasperSoft Studio and it automatically publishes the report to JasperServer as well, it overwrites expressions for subreports, images, ... You have to make sure you do not overwrite those while publishing.
How do you deploy from local DEV to PRD ? I would suggest you do it by using the export/import functionality in JasperServer ... It will automatically copy your DEV structure to the PRD server as well ... You only need to be aware if you also export and import the dependencies, on PRD your datasource connections will be overwritten.