DISEASE, PARASITISM AND HERBIVORY - MULTIDIMENSIONAL CHALLENGES IN PLANT EVOLUTION

Plants provide feeding sites for a broad range of parasites, commensals and symbionts. In the process, they can be subjected to selection whenever feeding choices are based upon heritable traits of the plants and the feeding affects plant fitness. The outcome of such selection depends on the correlation between choices made by various taxa. Recent work suggests that this multispecies selection, although common in natural communities, now needs to be incorporated more fully into ecological and evolutionary perspectives.