Macroevolutionary chemical escalation in an ancient plant–herbivore arms race

摘要: A central paradigm in the field of plant-herbivore interactions is that diversity and complexity secondary compounds plants have intensified over evolutionary time, resulting great variety products currently exists. Unfortunately, testing this proposal has been very limited. We analyzed volatile chemistry 70 species tropical plant genus Bursera used a molecular phylogeny to test whether species' chemical or escalated. The results confirm as new diverged time they tended be armed not only with more compounds/species, but also could potentially difficult for herbivores adapt because belong an increasing pathways. Overall increased, fast diversity, possibly allopatric gaining improved defense are locally, already existence elsewhere.