A Fig Deal: A Global Look at Fig Mosaic Disease and its Putative Associates

Critical review of host specificity and its coevolutionary implications in the fig/fig-wasp mutualism.

Figs (Ficus spp., Moraceae) and their pollinating wasps (Agaonidae, Chalcidoidea) constitute perhaps the most tightly integrated pollination mutualism that is known. Figs are characterized by extraordinarily high global and local species diversity. It has been proposed that the diversification of this mutualism has occurred through strict-sense coadaptation and cospeciation between pairs of fig...

How to Be a Fig

The 900-odd species of Ficus (20, 21) constitute the most distinctive of the widespread genera of tropical plants. Figs have (a) a complex obligatory mutualism with their pollinating agaonid fig wasps, yet are found in almost all tropical habitat types and geographic locations [this sets them apart from ant-acacias (63-65), euglossine-orchids (24,26), moth-yuccas (45, 88, 89,), ant-epiphytes (6...

Fig. 1

Figs and fig wasps

The current project builds on previous grants under the Darwin Initiative that focused on Nepal's flora, a key one of which dealt with plant information and technology transfer, run by the Natural History Museum in London. But the current project is much more ambitious. Although only funded for three years at present, the team hopes funds will be made available for the estimated 15 years it wil...

Ancient fig wasps indicate at least 34 Myr of stasis in their mutualism with fig trees.

Fig wasps and fig trees are mutually dependent, with each of the 800 or so species of fig trees (Ficus, Moraceae) typically pollinated by a single species of fig wasp (Hymenoptera: Agaonidae). Molecular evidence suggests that the relationship existed over 65 Ma, during the Cretaceous. Here, we record the discovery of the oldest known fossil fig wasps, from England, dated at 34 Ma. They possess ...