Trends in Ecology & Evolution
ReviewExperimental coevolution of species interactions
Section snippets
The rise of experimental coevolution
Naturalists have long recognized the importance of species interactions as a driving force of adaptation. Indeed, 19th-century evolutionary biologists often cited the conspicuous co-adaptations of interspecific pollination and mimicry mutualisms (see Glossary) as exemplars of evolution by natural selection. It is perhaps surprising then that coevolution, the process of reciprocal adaptation and counter-adaptation by ecologically interacting species, was not studied in earnest until the mid-20th
The tempo and mode of antagonistic coevolution
According to the Red Queen hypothesis, reciprocal selection arising from interspecific antagonisms, such as host–parasite interactions, should accelerate evolutionary rates through the need for continual adaptation and counter-adaptation 8, 9. (The history of the use of the Red Queen metaphor is described in 10, 11.) Recent tests of this prediction have compared evolutionary rates under coevolution against controls where coevolution is prevented, for example, in the presence versus absence of
Emerging directions in experimental coevolution
The major contributions of experimental coevolution thus far have been to provide direct evidence of the tempo and mode of antagonistic coevolutionary dynamics, the role of antagonistic coevolution in increasing diversity within and among populations, including the role of parasitism in maintaining sexual recombination, and the structure of specificity in coevolving antagonistic interactions. However, as the field matures, it is taking some exciting new directions; in what follows, we outline
Concluding remarks and potential for application
Overall, experimental evolution has afforded remarkable strides forward in understanding population-level responses to selection, the underlying genetics of adaptation, and the limits of evolution [64]. Although still in its infancy, experimental coevolution has great potential for informing understanding of community stability, species invasions, and the spread of disease and, as such, holds promise in more applied fields, most notably human health. Experimental coevolution techniques have
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to the reviewers for constructive comments on a previous version of this manuscript. This work was supported by a project grant (NE/H005080/1) to M.A.B. and a research fellowship (R16150) to B.K. from the Natural Environment Research Council (UK).
Glossary
- Antagonistic coevolution and/or interspecific antagonism
- coevolution is the reciprocal adaptation and counter-adaptation of species that interact ecologically. When the fitnesses of the two species are negatively correlated, such that an adaptation that increases fitness in one species decreases in the fitness of the other species and vice versa, these species interactions are termed ‘antagonistic’.
- Antagonistic pleiotropy
- a situation where one gene underlies more than one trait, and where one
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