Coevolution
In biology, coevolution occurs when two or more species reciprocally affect each other's evolution through the process of natural selection.
Charles Darwin mentioned evolutionary interactions between flowering plants and insects in On the Origin of Species (1859).
Naturalists in the late 1800s studied other examples of how interactions among species could result in reciprocal evolutionary change.
[2][3] More recently, it has also been demonstrated that coevolution can influence the structure and function of ecological communities, the evolution of groups of mutualists such as plants and their pollinators, and the dynamics of infectious disease.
[5] Coevolution is primarily a biological concept, but researchers have applied it by analogy to fields such as computer science, sociology, and astronomy.
[6][7] Flowers appeared and diversified relatively suddenly in the fossil record, creating what Charles Darwin described as the "abominable mystery" of how they had evolved so quickly; he considered whether coevolution could be the explanation.
[8][9] He first mentioned coevolution as a possibility in On the Origin of Species, and developed the concept further in Fertilisation of Orchids (1862).
[12][13] Several highly successful insect groups—especially the Hymenoptera (wasps, bees and ants) and Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) as well as many types of Diptera (flies) and Coleoptera (beetles)—evolved in conjunction with flowering plants during the Cretaceous (145 to 66 million years ago).
The floral characteristics of ornithophilous plants vary greatly among each other compared to closely related insect-pollinated species.
It is generally agreed that plants formed coevolutionary relationships with insects first, and ornithophilous species diverged at a later time.
The fact that birds can fly during inclement weather makes them more efficient pollinators where bees and other insects would be inactive.
Ornithophily may have arisen for this reason in isolated environments with poor insect colonization or areas with plants which flower in the winter.
[20] The genus Ficus is composed of 800 species of vines, shrubs, and trees, including the cultivated fig, defined by their syconia, the fruit-like vessels that either hold female flowers or pollen on the inside.
[25][26] Such mutualism is not automatic: other ant species exploit trees without reciprocating, following different evolutionary strategies.
Whichever organism, host or parasite, that cannot keep up with the other will be eliminated from their habitat, as the species with the higher average population fitness survives.
Cuckoos are counter-adapted to host defences with features such as thickened eggshells, shorter incubation (so their young hatch first), and flat backs adapted to lift eggs out of the nest.
The winged females act as parasites for the males of the other species as their sperm will only produce sterile hybrids.
Paul R. Ehrlich and Peter H. Raven in 1964 proposed the theory of escape and radiate coevolution to describe the evolutionary diversification of plants and butterflies.
[42] In the Rocky Mountains, red squirrels and crossbills (seed-eating birds) compete for seeds of the lodgepole pine.
[52] Mosaic, along with general coevolution, most commonly occurs at the population level and is driven by both the biotic and the abiotic environment.
[54][55][56][57][58] Daniel Hillis added "co-evolving parasites" to prevent an optimization procedure from becoming stuck at local maxima.
[60] The concept of coevolution was introduced in architecture by the Danish architect-urbanist Henrik Valeur as an antithesis to "star-architecture".
[62][63][64][65] At the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, Newcastle University, a coevolutionary approach to architecture has been defined as a design practice that engages students, volunteers and members of the local community in practical, experimental work aimed at "establishing dynamic processes of learning between users and designers.
"[66] In his book The Self-organizing Universe, Erich Jantsch attributed the entire evolution of the cosmos to coevolution.
In astronomy, an emerging theory proposes that black holes and galaxies develop in an interdependent way analogous to biological coevolution.
[67] Since year 2000, a growing number of management and organization studies discuss coevolution and coevolutionary processes.
Even so, Abatecola el al. (2020) reveals a prevailing scarcity in explaining what processes substantially characterize coevolution in these fields, meaning that specific analyses about where this perspective on socio-economic change is, and where it could move toward in the future, are still missing.
Changes in hardware, an operating system or web browser may introduce new features that are then incorporated into the corresponding applications running alongside.
