Combining experimental evolution and field population assays to study the evolution of host range breadth

Adapting to specific hosts often involves trade-offs that limit performance on other hosts. These constraints may either lead to narrow host ranges (i.e. specialists, able to exploit only one host type) or wide host ranges often leading to lower performance on each host (i.e. generalists). Here, we combined laboratory experiments on field populations with experimental evolution to investigate the impact of adaptation to the host on host range evolution and associated performance over this range. We used the two-spotted spider mite, Tetranychus urticae, a model organism for studies on the evolution of specialization. Field mite populations were sampled on three host plant species: tomato, citrus tree and rosebay (Nerium oleander). Testing these populations in the laboratory revealed that tomato populations of mites could exploit tomato only, citrus populations could exploit citrus and tomato whereas Nerium populations could exploit all three hosts. Besides, the wider niche ranges of citrus and Nerium populations came at the cost of low performance on their non-native hosts. Experimental lines selected to live on the same three host species exhibited similar patterns of host range and relative performance. This result suggests that adaptation to a new host species may lead to wider host ranges but at the expense of decreased performance on other hosts. We conclude that experimental evolution may reliably inform on evolution in the field.