Michael S. Singer

TL;DR: A global dataset is used to investigate host range for over 7,500 insect herbivore species covering a wide taxonomic breadth and interacting with more than 2,000 species of plants in 165 families to ask whether relatively specialized and generalized herbivores represent a dichotomy rather than a continuum from few to many host families and species attacked and whether diet breadth changes with increasing plant species richness toward the tropics.

TL;DR: It is suggested that greater specialization in tropical faunas is the result of differences in trophic interactions; for example, there are more distinct plant secondary chemical profiles from one tree species to the next in tropical forests than in temperate forests as well as more diverse and chronic pressures from natural enemy communities.

TL;DR: This work compares caterpillar-parasitoid interactions across a broad gradient of climatic variability and finds that the combined data in 15 geographically dispersed databases show a decrease in levels of parasitism as Climatic variability increases.

TL;DR: New developments in the evolution of ecological specialization are synthesized, using insect-plant interactions as a model, to find that theory based on simple genetic trade-offs in host use is being replaced by more subtle and complex pictures of genetic architecture, and multitrophic interactions have risen as a necessary framework for understanding specialization.

TL;DR: This case challenges the conventional view that self-medication behavior is restricted to animals with advanced cognitive abilities, such as primates, and empowers the science of self-Medication by placing it in the domain of adaptive plasticity theory.