ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2021
A sink host allows a specialist herbivore to persist in a seasonal source.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Niche Breadth and Olfactory Context Shape Informed Passive Dispersal.Ecology letters · 2026Article
- Population dynamics of generalist and specialist strategies under feast-famine cycles.PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- Evolution in agricultural systems: Moving toward the understanding of complexity.Evolutionary applications · 2022Review
- Effective specialist or jack of all trades? Experimental evolution of a crop pest in fluctuating and stable environments.Evolutionary applications · 2022Article
- Mechanisms of dispersal and colonisation in a wind-borne cereal pest, the haplodiploid wheat curl mite.Scientific reports · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In seasonal environments, sinks that are more persistent than sources may serve as temporal stepping stones for specialists. However, this possibility has to our knowledge, not been demonstrated to date, as such environments are thought to select for generalists, and the role of sinks, both in the field and in the laboratory, is difficult to document. Here, we used laboratory experiments to show that herbivorous arthropods associated with seasonally absent main (source) habitats can endure on a suboptimal (sink) host for several generations, albeit with a negative growth rate. Additionally, they dispersed towards this host less often than towards the main host and accepted it less often than the main host. Finally, repeated experimental evolution attempts revealed no adaptation to the suboptimal host. Nevertheless, field observations showed that arthropods are found in suboptimal habitats when the main habitat is unavailable. Together, these results show that evolutionary rescue in the suboptimal habitat is not possible. Instead, the sink habitat functions as a temporal stepping stone, allowing for the persistence of a specialist when the source habitat is gone.
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