ArticleEcology and evolution2020
Nonadaptive host-use specificity in tropical armored scale insects.
Article in Ecology and evolution, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Genomic Evolution and Patterns of Horizontal Gene Transfer in Coccomorpha Species.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Pest categorisation ofEFSA journal. European Food Safety Authority · 2025Article
- Pest categorisation ofEFSA journal. European Food Safety Authority · 2025Article
- Four new species of Aspidiotini (Hemiptera, Diaspididae, Aspidiotinae) from Panama, with a key to Panamanian species.ZooKeys · 2021Article
- Nonadaptive host-use specificity in tropical armored scale insects.Ecology and evolution · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Most herbivorous insects are diet specialists in spite of the apparent advantages of being a generalist. This conundrum might be explained by fitness trade-offs on alternative host plants, yet the evidence of such trade-offs has been elusive. Another hypothesis is that specialization is nonadaptive, evolving through neutral population-genetic processes and within the bounds of historical constraints. Here, we report on a striking lack of evidence for the adaptiveness of specificity in tropical canopy communities of armored scale insects. We find evidence of pervasive diet specialization, and find that host use is phylogenetically conservative, but also find that more-specialized species occur on fewer of their potential hosts than do less-specialized species, and are no more abundant where they do occur. Of course local communities might not reflect regional diversity patterns. But based on our samples, comprising hundreds of species of hosts and armored scale insects at two widely separated sites, more-specialized species do not appear to outperform more generalist species.
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Registered trials
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