The raw material for coevolution

Our current understanding of the coevolutionary process has been based upon studies of six aspects of the biology of organisms that shape the potential for ongoing reciprocal evolutionary change in natural communities. These include analyses of the phylogenetic context of coevolving interactions, patterns of specialization of species to one another, the genetic architecture of coevolution and its ecological consequences, the distributed outcomes of interspecific interactions; the rates and forms of selection on interactions within biological communities, and the geographic dynamics of interacting species. These studies of the raw material for coevolution are helping replace the general concept of diffuse coevolution with more testable hypotheses on the structure and ongoing dynamics of reciprocal evolutionary change within natural communities.