Specialization

All organisms specialize but one must ask why some organisms are host specific and others are less host specific.  The determining factor of specialization is how these different specializaations will affect coevolution between two species. 

Catagorizing organisms as specialists or generalists can be a problem due to a number of reasons including semantics, taxanomic and conceptual. 

With respect to parasites, predators, and grazers, specialization changes with the different stresses that may happen in an environment.  Each must be able to deal with changes in the hosts’ induced defenses to the defenses of a number of different hosts. 

 

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