Exploring the complexity plant–insect coevolutionary dynamics
Christopher Wheat, Stockholm University
July 04, 2025 | 15h30 | CIBIO’s Auditorium, Campus de Vairão
Plants and insects are locked in a coevolutionary battle, where plants develop novel chemical defenses and insects adapt to overcome them. These interactions are responsible for much of the Earth’s biodiversity, with adaptations that are key innovations driving speciation bursts on both sides of the interaction. One persistent question is whether traits identified as key innovations on a macroevolutionary scale accurately predict functional performance and selection dynamics within species, as this necessitates characterizing their function, investigating their fitness consequences, and exploring the selection dynamics acting upon them. I will cover the nearly 20 years of my work studying interactions between mustard plants and their butterfly herbivores, focusing upon how diverse functional genomic insights from butterflies reveal complexity in these coevolutionary interactions.
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