TREE-article about antagonistic coevolution, resistance and tolerance

Together with my colleague Lars Råberg, I have recently published an "Opinion"-article in Trends in Ecology & Evolution, that has just come out on "early view". This article deals with the different roles of resistance and tolerance in antagonistic coevolutionary interactions involving animals.

Basically, we argue that the evolution of victim tolerance, instead of resistance, might halt coevolutionary arms races and make them less probable, in contrast to if the victim evolves resistance instead. This idéa has been floating around for quite a while in the plant litterature, but we extend the idéa to animals and to other types of enemy-victim interactions. We illustrate this using a variety of empirical examples from several different types of antagonistic enemy-victim interactions involving animals. Here is the abstract and link if you are interested:

Resistance and tolerance in animal enemy–victim coevolution

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Erik I. Svensson and Lars Råberg

Victim defence against enemies can be divided into resistance (minimizing successful enemy attacks) and tolerance (minimizing the fitness impact of enemy attacks). Although resistance has a negative effect on enemy fitness, tolerance, by this definition, does not necessarily; the relative importance of resistance and tolerance within a population might therefore affect enemy–victim coevolution. Resistance and tolerance have been distinguished in studies of plant defence, whereas most studies of antagonistic interactions in animals have focused on resistance, neglecting tolerance. We suggest that tolerance is also an important means of defence in animal victim–enemy interactions such as brood parasitism, mating interactions and territoriality. We discuss the potential coevolutionary consequences of tolerance variation in these animal enemy–victim interactions.