What We Don't Know About Diet-Breadth Evolution in Herbivorous Insects

Half a million species of herbivorous insects have been described. Most of them are diet specialists, using only a few plant species as hosts. Biologists suspect that their specificity is key to their diversity. But why do herbivorous insects tend to be diet specialists? In this review, we catalog a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Annual review of ecology, evolution, and systematics evolution, and systematics, 2020-11, Vol.51 (1), p.103-122
Main Authors: Hardy, Nate B, Kaczvinsky, Chloe, Bird, Gwendolyn, Normark, Benjamin B
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Diet
ecological specialization
feedbacks
Host plants
insect-plant interactions
Insects
phytophagy
Plant species
Population genetics
Species
trade-offs
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Summary:Half a million species of herbivorous insects have been described. Most of them are diet specialists, using only a few plant species as hosts. Biologists suspect that their specificity is key to their diversity. But why do herbivorous insects tend to be diet specialists? In this review, we catalog a broad range of explanations. We review the evidence for each and suggest lines of research to obtain the evidence we lack. We then draw attention to a second major question, namely how changes in diet breadth affect the rest of a species' biology. In particular, we know little about how changes in diet breadth feed back on genetic architecture, the population genetic environment, and other aspects of a species' ecology. Knowing more about how generalists and specialists differ should go a long way toward sorting out potential explanations of specificity, and yield a deeper understanding of herbivorous insect diversity.
ISSN:1543-592X
1545-2069
DOI:10.1146/annurev-ecolsys-011720-023322