Principles of host-selection evolution in insects
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Key Words：host choice,heritable preference,learned host preferences,preimaginal conditioning
Abstract： The host preference of an insect can be genetic,caused by otherwise heritable environmental effects,or shaped by experience within the insect’s lifetime.While genetic variation in habitat selection appears to be widespread it can be extremely difficult to prove that host preferences observed in the field have a genetic basis and are not the result of other factors,such as temperature,nutrition,conditioning and inherited environmental effects.There is some published evidence that inherited environmental effects influence habitat selection and that experience can modify feeding and oviposition preferences.Although a Pavlovian conditioning test and a nervous tissue grafting test challenged the assumptions of the preimaginal conditioning hypothesis,this result needs further investigation.The feeding and oviposition preferences of polyphagous flies in urban garbage were more plastic than those of saprophagous flies.