page_title: Coevolution
section_title: Predators and prey
hierarchical_section_title: Coevolution / Predators and prey
caption_attribution_description: Afrikaans: 'n Luiperd (Panthera pardus) met bosbok (Tragelaphus sylvaticus) prooi in die Krugerwildtuin Deutsch: Leopard (Panthera pardus) mit erlegtem Buschbock (Tragelaphus sylvaticus) im Krüger-Nationalpark English: Leopard (Panthera pardus) killing a young Bushbuck (Tragelaphus sylvaticus) in the Kruger National Park Français&#160;: Léopard (Panthera pardus) en train de tuer une jeune gazelle (Tragelaphus sylvaticus) dans le parc national Kruger Čeština: Levhart skvrnitý zabíjející lesoně (Krugerův národní park)
context_page_description: In biology, coevolution occurs when two or more species reciprocally affect each other's evolution through the process of natural selection. The term sometimes is used for two traits in the same species affecting each other's evolution, as well as gene-culture coevolution.
  Charles Darwin mentioned evolutionary interactions between flowering plants and insects in On the Origin of Species. Although he did not use the word coevolution, he suggested how plants and insects could evolve through reciprocal evolutionary changes. Naturalists in the late 1800s studied other examples of how interactions among species could result in reciprocal evolutionary change. Beginning in the 1940s, plant pathologists developed breeding programs that were examples of human-induced coevolution. Development of new crop plant varieties that were resistant to some diseases favored rapid evolution in pathogen populations to overcome those plant defenses. That, in turn, required the development of yet new resistant crop plant varieties, producing an ongoing cycle of reciprocal evolution in crop plants and diseases that continues to this day.
context_section_description: Predators and prey interact and coevolve: the predator to catch the prey more effectively, the prey to escape. The coevolution of the two mutually imposes selective pressures. These often lead to an evolutionary arms race between prey and predator, resulting in anti-predator adaptations.
  The same applies to herbivores, animals that eat plants, and the plants that they eat. In the Rocky Mountains, red squirrels and crossbills (seed-eating birds) compete for seeds of the lodgepole pine. The squirrels get at pine seeds by gnawing through the cone scales, whereas the crossbills get at the seeds by extracting them with their unusual crossed mandibles. In areas where there are squirrels, the lodgepole's cones are heavier, and have fewer seeds and thinner scales, making it more difficult for squirrels to get at the seeds. Conversely, where there are crossbills but no squirrels, the cones are lighter in construction, but have thicker scales, making it more difficult for crossbills to get at the seeds. The lodgepole's cones are in an evolutionary arms race with the two kinds of herbivore.
caption: Predator and prey: a leopard killing a bushbuck
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