Despite the enormous ecological success of insects elsewhere on earth, they have failed to colonize oceans. A significant portion of the marine littoral insect fauna consists of Coleoptera and the highest number of species belongs to the beetle family Staphylinidae. At present, over 400 species in 91 genera and eight subfamilies are confined to marine coastal habitats. Coastal Staphylinidae are polyphyletic, and have diverse adaptations of structure, physiology, and behavior. Aleocharinae contain the largest number of coastal species (about 200 species in 46 genera). Today I would like to briefly introduce my research program on the diversity, phylogeny, habitat evolution, and historical biogeography of the coastal Aleocharinae. Three selected aleocharine lineages containing many coastal species published with my colleagues are provided.

Coevolution is a large part of evolution and the patterns of adaptation and speciation may be modified by coevolution processes. The arms races between insects and plants in natural system are one of coevolutionary processes and the mechanistic and predictive processes of the system may be helpful to understand the interaction between host plants and herbivores in agricultural systems. Furthermore, human activities may give direct and/or indirect effects on ecological and evolutionary processes in natural and agricultural ecosystems and have selection power as well as natural selection. Recent studies showed that the fundamental principles of evolution – variation (genetic difference, phenotypic plasticity, epigenetic change, and nongenetic inheritance), selection (directional or fluctuating), connectivity and eco-evolutionary dynamics – are important to understand the interplay between insects and plants. The coevolutionary processes between plants and herbivores were also interpreted by the geographic mosaic theory. The evolutionary effects on ecological dynamics in natural ecosystems were classified four categories: trophic specialization, evolution of defense, interaction outcome and loss of traits in absent of interaction. It was reviewed that it is necessary to consider the ecological response in evolutionary studies as well as evolutionary variation in ecological researches.