Year: 2022

REVERSAL OF SPECIALIZATION. "Recently, however, a growing number of studies of specialization indicate that transitions from specialization to generalization are possible." http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/281/1795/20142004.short View in LinkedIn

EXAMPLES OF REVERSALS. "In birds, transitions in the level of specialization are rare. Yet in plants, there are many examples of reversals in specialization; for example, pollinator breadth exhibits little phylogenetic signal. Phytophagous insects also exhibit equivocal results with transitions occurring in either direction." http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/281/1795/20142004.short View in LinkedIn

MAIN DIRECTION. "Thus, evidence is mounting that specialization is not an absolute ‘dead-end’, even though a disproportionate number of transitions may be in the direction of generalist to specialist in some systems." https://lnkd.in/dcsE4uQ View in LinkedIn

PATH TO SPECIALIZATION. "The envisioned pathway that would produce biased transitions from generalization to specialization involves the idea of trade-offs, which however have proved elusive to demonstrate empirically. The trade-offs might operate at the physiological level through antagonistic pleiotropy." http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/281/1795/20142004.short View in LinkedIn

TRADE-OFFS. "Specialization on clades of hosts or mutualists is widespread and that the use of certain hosts is indeed lost over evolutionary timescales. Notably, this pattern is not only consistent with trade-offs, but also consistent with ecological models of the loss of selection for interacting with hosts or mutualists that are outside of a species' range." http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/281/1795/20142004.short View in LinkedIn

EXTINCTION RISK. "If specialists occupy a narrow niche, they often also occupy smaller ranges, and endemics are more susceptible to extinction. While some data suggest that the evolution of specialization is associated with evolutionary success in plants, habitat specialization is correlated with increased extinction risk in birds and bumblebees." http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/281/1795/20142004.short View in LinkedIn

NO DEAD END. "Specialization is not a certain ‘dead-end’ from an evolutionary perspective. First, transition from specialization to generalization is possible and even prevalent in certain ecological contexts. Second, specialization in traits related to foraging or reproduction can be associated with increased evolutionary success of some specialist clades, especially in specialist clades that experience greater transition rates to different specialist states." http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/281/1795/20142004.short View in LinkedIn

DRIVER OF SPECIATION? "Specialization also need not by itself be the driver of speciation. In the sword-bill-pollinated clade of passionflowers…specialized pollination is not the driver of speciation but instead the precondition for successful species persistence in small populations, which then adapt locally and evolve into separate species." http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/281/1795/20142004.short View in LinkedIn

COUNTER-FORCES. "Specialization on large bees may select for large petals or bracts, but this may be countered by selection by herbivores (that use the same cues to find host tissues), selection for water conservation in xeric environments or selection for rapid seed production in seasonal habitats." http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/281/1795/20142004.short View in LinkedIn

BIODIVERSITY. "Environmental heterogeneity is a key factor both in the evolution of specialization and in the evolutionary success of the resulting lineage." http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/281/1795/20142004.short View in LinkedIn