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Upward Adaptive Radiation Cascades: Predator Diversification Induced by Prey Diversification

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Biodiversity is of great cultural and economic value to humans.

We are only beginning to understand how diversification, the interplay of processes that generate biodiversity, works and its consequences for co-evolutionary processes.

Predatory species are affected by prey diversification.

Diversification and speciation at lower trophic levels may affect radiations higher in the food web.

Predator intraspecific diversity and incipient speciation are potentially threatened worldwide.

The value of biodiversity is widely appreciated, but we are only beginning to understand the interplay of processes that generate biodiversity and their consequences for coevolutionary interactions. Whereas predator–prey coevolution is most often analyzed in the context of evolutionary arms races, much less has been written about how predators are affected by, and respond to, evolutionary diversification in their prey. We hypothesize here that adaptive radiation of prey may lead to diversification and potentially speciation in predators, a process that we call an upwards adaptive radiation cascade. In this paper we lay out the conceptual basis for upwards adaptive radiation cascades, explore evidence for such cascades, and finally advocate for intensified research.

Section snippets

Adaptive Radiation and Coevolutionary Diversification

Much of the rich biodiversity found on our planet is the consequence of bursts of diversification that are associated with the rapid origin of new species and a diversity of ecological functions, referred to as adaptive radiation 1, 2, 3. Species interactions are important in adaptive radiations, and theory, micro- and macroevolutionary studies, and paleontological data all suggest that selection arising from predator–prey interactions can strongly influence diversification in the prey 4, 5, 6,

Potential Processes Involved in Radiation Cascades

The evolution of more diverse prey phenotypes should increase potential niche diversity for predators. There are three possible outcomes for the response of predators to such ecological diversification of prey (Figure 1). First, predators may continue to feed primarily on only one of the phenotypes (Figure 1A). Second, predators may evolve a generalist strategy from a more specialist strategy as they track the expanding phenotypic diversity of their prey (Figure 1B). Finally, predators may

Upwards Adaptive Radiation Cascades from Plants to Phytophagous Insects and Their Natural Enemies

Diversification and speciation among primary producers may affect resource accessibility for a range of different herbivores [10]. In the course of their evolutionary history, flowering plants have evolved different combinations of defense traits, often arranged as so-called defense syndromes [39]. Individual species of phytophagous insects often adapt to the defense of a single plant species because specialization towards overcoming a single defense combination can be a superior evolutionary

Likely Upwards Radiation Cascades in Aquatic Ecosystems

In lakes, habitat-associated niche specialization in fish at lower trophic levels is well documented, and is often associated with divergence in feeding-related adaptations between habitats, such as the pelagic and the littoral or profundal benthic zone 23, 49. Although not yet studied extensively 50, 51, 52, there is good reason to expect that such diversification at lower trophic levels impacts on the evolution of larger predatory fish, causing upwards adaptive radiation cascades. Four

Not Every Predator Adaptive Radiation Is the Consequence of an Upwards Radiation Cascade

Upwards adaptive radiation cascades are characterized by eco-evolutionary interactions between predators and their prey at or around the time of diversification. This is independent of whether diversification is recent or took place anciently. In the model of Ehrlich and Raven, plants diversified their defenses because herbivorous insects exerted strong selection, and in turn this exerted selection on insects to overcome the defenses [10]. When predator and prey lineages did not both exist, or

Radiation Cascades: Summary of What Is Known

The examples we have provided may serve as an indication of the existence of upwards radiation cascades in fish predator–prey systems, and add to the previously documented insect and insect–plant cases. We have chosen examples that vary in the extent of evolutionary diversification. We are not implying that such cascades are ubiquitous in nature, and we would expect to find many negative examples paralleling what has been described for diverging herbivorous insects and their natural enemies [48]

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