Host shifts and host-associated differentiation in herbivorous insects: ecological causes and consequences

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One of the most obvious features of life on Earth is its astonishing diversity – at least a million species are known to science, and perhaps as many as 30 million more remain to be discovered. Some lineages have diversified much more abundantly than others, though, and accounting for this differential success is one of the most fundamental questions in evolutionary ecology. Among the most spectacular examples of “hyperdiversity” are plant-feeding insects and the parasitoids that attack them – as many as half of all animal species may belong to one or the other of these groups. One reason for the evolutionary success of plant-feeding insects and parasitoids may be their tendency to evolve specialized diets. Diets evolve via host-shifting (adding new host plants to diet), and then new diversity evolves by host-associated differentiation (HAD), in which a single diet generalist diverges to form a new pair of host-specialist species.