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Evolutionary dynamics of specialisation in herbivorous stick insects.
Journal article

Evolutionary dynamics of specialisation in herbivorous stick insects.

  • Larose C Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland.
  • Rasmann S Institute of Biology, University of Neuchatel, Rue Emile-Argand 11, CH-2000, Neuchâtel, Switzerland.
  • Schwander T Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland.
  • 2018-12-21
Published in:
  • Ecology letters. - 2019
Chaparral biome
Timema stick insect
host shift
plant secondary metabolites
plant-herbivore interaction
realised vs. fundamental niche
redwood
Animals
Biological Evolution
Ecosystem
Herbivory
Insecta
Plants
English Understanding the evolutionary dynamics underlying herbivorous insect mega-diversity requires investigating the ability of insects to shift and adapt to different host plants. Feeding experiments with nine related stick insect species revealed that insects retain the ability to use ancestral host plants after shifting to novel hosts, with host plant shifts generating fundamental feeding niche expansions. These expansions were, however, not accompanied by expansions of the realised feeding niches, as species on novel hosts are generally ecologically specialised. For shifts from angiosperm to chemically challenging conifer hosts, generalist fundamental feeding niches even evolved jointly with strong host plant specialisation, indicating that host plant specialisation is not driven by constraints imposed by plant chemistry. By coupling analyses of plant chemical compounds, fundamental and ecological feeding niches in multiple insect species, we provide novel insights into the evolutionary dynamics of host range expansion and contraction in herbivorous insects.
Language
  • English
Open access status
closed
Identifiers
Persistent URL
https://sonar.ch/global/documents/149022
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