The ability of species to modulate environmental conditions and resources has long been of interest. In the past three decades the impacts of these biotic modifiers have been investigated as ‘ecosystem engineers’, ‘niche constructors’, ‘facilitators’ and ‘keystone species’. This environmental modulation can vary spatially from extremely local to global, temporally from days to geological time, and taxonomically from a few to a...

Spatial mosaics occur in both evolutionary and ecological properties of species' interactions. Studies of these patterns have facilitated description and prediction of evolutionary responses of interacting species to each other and to changing environments. We propose seeking complementary understanding of community assembly and dynamics by studying ecological and mechanistic properties of mosaics. We define “species' associat...

Ecological specialization is a fundamental and well‐studied concept, yet its great reach and complexity limit current understanding in important ways. More than 20 years after the publication of D. J. Futuyma and G. Moreno's oft‐cited, major review of the topic, we synthesize new developments in the evolution of ecological specialization. Using insect–plant interactions as a model, we focus on important developments in four cr...