News Finding: This conclusion strongly suggests that trade-offs play a major role in the appearance of specialists during the evolutionary history of this mega-diverse group of parasitic wasps.
Paper Finding: The negative relationship between diet breadth and establishment success suggests the existence of significant fitness trade-offs with diet breadth; these trade-offs appear to be widespread and generally involved in the evolution of dietary specialization in the hyper-diverse taxon of parasitic wasps.
News Context: Thus, these results support the hypothesis that specialists are generally more efficient at utilizing their hosts than generalists. This conclusion strongly suggests that trade-offs play a major role in the appearance of specialists during the evolutionary history of this mega-diverse group of parasitic wasps. However, Silvia Rossinelli and Sven Bacher also point out that specialization does not always bring advantages; in environments where their preferred host is not available, generalists will profit from being able to utilize a variety of alternative hosts.
Paper Context: Establishment success was higher than average in Australasia and the Palearctic region (Fig. The negative relationship between diet breadth and establishment success suggests the existence of significant fitness trade-offs with diet breadth; these trade-offs appear to be widespread and generally involved in the evolution of dietary specialization in the hyper-diverse taxon of parasitic wasps. It might be that some of the generalist species included in our study actually are cryptic species complexes consisting of multiple species with narrower host ranges.