Branching Out with Coevolutionary Trees

Abstract

Coevolution (reciprocal evolutionary change in interacting species) is posited as a major mechanism that creates new species. A challenge has been to understand how coevolution has shaped the patterns of relatedness of interacting species and the traits involved in the interaction. Ongoing advances in the field of molecular phylogenetics have opened exciting avenues to examine both ancient and recent coevolutionary processes. Using plant-insect interactions as examples, I review the predictions of a number of coevolutionary models.