Rapidly Evolving Associations Among Oviposition Preferences Fail to Constrain Evolution of Insect Diet
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Abstract
We estimated associations among host preferences in a set of four butterfly populations, two of which had switched to a novel host species within the past 20 generations and one of which represented the putative ancestral condition of the changed populations. Preference trials were performed on insects taken from one of the populations feeding on the novel host. In replicated samples from this site, insects that discriminated among individuals of their ancestral host species tended to reject the novel host. This association among preferences was not found in replicated samples from the ancestral condition. We conclude that the association itself had evolved recently at the site where we found it. We tested the hypothesis that an evolutionary trade-off existed between two traits: (1) diet breadth in terms of number of species used and (2) the ability to discriminate within each species. The hypothesis was rejected. In populations that had switched to the novel host, acceptance of this host had increased substantially, but no change had occurred in discrimination within the ancestral host. Thus, associations among preferences within and among host species were evolutionarily labile and had failed to act as constraints on diet evolution in the populations we studied.
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