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Coevolution is the process by which two or more species evolve in tandem by exerting selection pressures on each other. Examples of coevolutionary systems include host and parasites, predators and prey, and mutualistic or symbiotic interactions.
This study revealed that cuckoo hosts coordinated two evolutionarily successive but opposing behaviours by reshaping the instinctive egg retrieval reaction to different flexible reactions during their coevolution with parasitic cuckoos.
An evolutional and functional study on bug saliva suggests that horizontally transferred genes provide a selective advantage to recipient insects by enhancing their feeding abilities.
Selection is expected to act differently on aposematic and cryptic species. Analysis of wing images revealed that camouflaged moths exhibit higher wing pattern variability than aposematic moths, supporting the theory that camouflaged species display more variability, consistent with anti-predator strategy.
Climate changes can destabilize soil microbial communities, but compound and sequential extreme climate events will magnify the destabilizing effects to other trophic levels — thereby impacting terrestrial biodiversity and ecosystem functioning.
A defensive bacterial symbiont, spreading rapidly through populations of whitefly in nature, suppresses the proliferation, sporulation and transmission of a fungal pathogen in the whitefly. The pathogen is shown to be an important driving force for rapid shifts of the symbiont in the natural niche.
Coevolutionary warfare between bacteria and phage results in the diversification of anti-phage CRISPR arrays among the most successful bacterial competitors
Whole-genome sequencing and comparative omics analyses highlight recent and parallel paths to adaptive evolution involving expansions in zinc-binding proteins in the genomes of diverse cold-adapted algae.
This month’s Genome Watch highlights how genome and transcriptome sequencing of newly identified endosymbionts helps to connect genetic information to their protective functions.