Herbivores coevolution with plants

Foley WJ, Moore BD (2005) Plant secondary metabolites and vertebrate herbivores - from physiological regulation to ecosystem function. Curr Opin Plant Biol 8 430 135 Freeland WJ (1991) Plant secondary metabolites biochemical coevolution with herbivores. In Palo RT, Robbins CT (eds) Plant defenses against mammalian herbivory. CRC, Boca Raton, FL, pp 61-81... 

Coevolution is defined as reciprocal stepwise adaptations between at least two species (Ehrlich and Raven, 1964). Coevolution without the criterion of reciprocity is indistinguishable from evolution and hence a useless concept (Lindroth, 1988). Consider the following scenario. A plant develops effective antiherbivore defenses. In response, a herbivore counteradapts to circumvent these defenses and is at a competitive advantage over other herbivores. The plant, in turn, responds to this breach of its defenses. In insects, such pairwise reciprocal evolution can take the form of a chemical arms race (Dawkins and Krebs, 1979). Coevolution differs from evolution by being narrower, with fewer participants, perhaps even only two species or two populations. In reality, in most ecosystems, many species prey on many other species. Therefore, we can at best speak of diffuse coevolution, with a number of participants that exert diluted selection pressures. 

Plant secondary metabolites, biochemical coevolution with herbivores. InPlant Defenses Against MammalianHerbivory, ed. R. T. Palo and C. T. Robbins, pp. 61-81. Boca Raton, FL CRC Press. 

Futuyama DJ, Keese Me. Evolution and coevolution of plants and 38. ph)4ophagous arthropods. In Herbivores Their Interactions with Secondary Plant Metabolites Rosenthal A, Berenbaum MR, eds. 39. 1992. Academic Press, San Diego. 

Berenbaum MR (1983) Coumarins and caterpillars a case for coevolution. Evolution 37 163-179 Berenbaum MR (1991) Coumarins. In Rosenthal G, Berenbaum MR (eds) Herbivores their interactions with secondary plant metabolites. Academic, New York, pp 221-249 Berenbaum MR (2002) Postgenomic chemical ecology from genetic code to ecological interactions. J Chem Ecol 28 873-896... 

Glycosides are elaborated by a large number of plants, and within families are often diversified in structure considerably. This diversification seems correlated with the coevolution of groups of plants with specialist herbivores. Examples are found In the Passiflora-Heliconius interaction and in the association of Pieris and Brasslca The same phenomenon has recently been determined to occur in the Drosophila-cactus-yeast coevolved system (5,6) and may be present In the Danaiid-AscIepias and other systems (7). 

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