Host relationships between insects and plants are one of the major factor driving evolutionary diversification within terrestrial ecosystems. Beetles (Coleoptera) are the most diverse and species-rich group of insects, and a robust, time-calibrated phylogeny is fundamental to understanding macroevolutionary processes that underlie their diversity. Recently, many studies have been carried out about the relationships among those taxa according to the attention on co-evolution of phytophagous insects and their hosts, however, most of them focused on special taxa (family or genus level) of insects. In this presentation, we especially reviewed current trends of studies on interactions between coleopteran insects and host plant in the world and Korea for proposals of future studies.

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.