Local adaptation and ecological genetics of host‐plant specialization in a leaf beetle

The tendency of insect species to evolve specialization to one or a few plant species is probably a major reason for the remarkable diversity of herbivorous insects. The suggested explanations for this general trend toward specialization include a range of evolutionary mechanisms, whose relative importance is debated. Here we address two potentially important mechanisms: (i) how variation in the geographic distribution of host use may lead to the evolution of local adaptation and specialization; (ii) how selection for specialization may lead to the evolution of trade-offs in performance between different hosts. We performed a quantitative genetic experiment of larval performance in three different populations of the alpine leaf beetle Oreina elongata reared on two of its main host plants. Due to differences in host availability, each population represents a distinctly different selective regime in terms of host use including selection for specialization on one or the other host as well as selection for utilizing both hosts during the larval stage. The results suggest that selection for specialization has lead to some degree of local adaptations in host use: both single-host population had higher larval growth rate on their respective native host plant genus, while there was no difference between plant treatments in the two-host population. However, differences between host plant treatments within populations were generally small and the degree of local adaptation in performance traits seems to be relatively limited. Genetic correlations in performance traits between the hosts ranged from zero in the two-host population to significantly positive in the single-host populations. This suggests that selection for specialization in single host populations typically also increased performance on the alternative host that is not naturally encountered. Moreover, the lack of a positive genetic correlation in the two host-population give support for the hypothesis that performance trade-offs between two host plants may typically evolve when a population have adapted to both these plants. We conclude that although there is selection for specialization in larval performance traits it seems as if the genetic architecture of these traits have limited the divergence between populations in relative performance on the two hosts.