Background We challenge the oft-repeated claim that the beetles (Coleoptera) are the most
species-rich order of animals. Instead, we assert that another order of insects, the …

The notion that shifts to new hosts can initiate insect speciation is more than 150 years old,
yet widespread conflation with paradigms of sympatric speciation has led to confusion about …

Host shifts to new plant species can drive speciation for plant-feeding insects, but how commonly
do host shifts also drive diversification for the parasites of those same insects? Oak gall …

1. Although divergence via host‐plant shifting is a common theme in the speciation of some
phytophagous insects, it is not clear whether host shifts are typically initiators of speciation or …

Congeneric parasites are unlikely to specialize on the same tissues of the same host species,
likely because of strong multifarious selection against niche overlap. Exceptions where >1 …

Why are some species sexually dimorphic while other closely related species are not?
When the degree of sexual dimorphism varies within a genus, an integrative phylogenetic …

Ecological interactions can play a major role in driving the process of speciation when they
lead to a decrease in gene flow between diverging lineages. Various pre-and post-zygotic …

Parasites tend to be host specialists. While a generalist strategy confers access to more
potential hosts, the evolution of habitat-specific adaptations may improve fitness on one or a few …

In the face of insect decline, monitoring projects are launched widely to assess trends of
insect populations. Collecting over long time periods results in large numbers of samples with …

The diversity of tropical herbivorous insects has been explained as a direct function of plant
species diversity. Testing that explanation, we reared 2857 flies from flowers and seeds of …