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The Red Queen hypothesis has been invoked by some authors to explain evolution of aging. [30] [31] The main idea is that aging is favored by natural selection since it allows faster adaptation to changing conditions, especially in order to keep pace with the evolution of pathogens, predators and prey. [31]
The whelk predators used their own shell to open the shell of their prey, oftentimes breaking both shells of the predator and prey in the process. This led to the fitness of larger-shelled prey to be higher and then more selected for through generations, however, the predator's population selected for those who were more efficient at opening ...
Enemy release may be weaker, too, when an exotic species is more closely related to native species in their introduced ranges, making them more likely to share herbivores or pathogens. [22] In a meta-analysis of 19 research studies involving 72 pairs of native and invasive plants, invasive exotic species did not incur less damage than their ...
Hosts and parasites exert reciprocal selective pressures on each other, which may lead to rapid reciprocal adaptation.For organisms with short generation times, host–parasite coevolution can be observed in comparatively small time periods, making it possible to study evolutionary change in real-time under both field and laboratory conditions.
Because parasites interact with other species, they can readily act as vectors of pathogens, causing disease. [9] [10] [11] Predation is by definition not a symbiosis, as the interaction is brief, but the entomologist E. O. Wilson has characterised parasites as "predators that eat prey in units of less than one". [2]
Joseph Connell published his hypothesis in 1970 in Dynamics of Populations. [2] Unlike Janzen, Connell proposed experiments that focused on the key prediction that exclusion of host-specific predators would cause a decrease in diversity as tree species with greater establishment or competitive ability formed low-diversity seedling and sapling communities where dominance was concentrated in a ...
For example, exploitative interactions between a predator and prey can result in the extinction of the victim (the prey, in this case), as the predator, by definition, kills the prey, and thus reduces its population. [2] Another effect of these interactions is in the coevolutionary "hot" and "cold spots" put forth by geographic mosaic theory ...
In general, whether a specific behavioral change serves an adaptive purpose for the parasite, the host, or both, depends on the entire "host-parasite system": [47] The life cycle of the pathogen, its virulence and the host's immune response. [47] Conversely, evolved behaviors of the host may be a result of adaptations to parasitism. [57]