调控物种互动的特征在很大程度是遗传的，所以认为亲缘关系较近的生物比亲缘关系较远的生物更有可能有相似的生态互动似乎是符合逻辑的。
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有关这一关系已经进行的研究工作很少，而且少量这样的研究也往往关注专门化的生物，如寄生虫或食草昆虫。对包括专门化生物和非专门化生物、无细胞生物、单细胞生物和多细胞生物在内的各种不同互动类群（包括所有互动类型）中的宿主利用方式的演化所做的一项 新的分析，支持认为所有物种的生态互动都具有遗传性（即在演化过程中被保留了下来）这样一个观点。
同样规则似乎也推动着大多数生态互动的演化，并且对于地球生物多样性的组织也有很大贡献。(生物谷Bioon.net)
生物谷推荐原文出处：
Nature doi:10.1038/nature09113
Ecological interactions are evolutionarily conserved across the entire tree of life
José M. Gómez, Miguel Verdú & Francisco Perfectti
Ecological interactions are crucial to understanding both the ecology and the evolution of organisms1, 2. Because the phenotypic traits regulating species interactions are largely a legacy of their ancestors, it is widely assumed that ecological interactions are phylogenetically conserved, with closely related species interacting with similar partners2. However, the existing empirical evidence is inadequate to appropriately evaluate the hypothesis of phylogenetic conservatism in ecological interactions, because it is both ecologically and taxonomically biased. In fact, most studies on the evolution of ecological interactions have focused on specialized organisms, such as some parasites or insect herbivores3, 4, 5, 6, 7, belonging to a limited subset of the overall tree of life. Here we study the evolution of host use in a large and diverse group of interactions comprising both specialist and generalist acellular, unicellular and multicellular organisms. We show that, as previously found for specialized interactions, generalized interactions can be evolutionarily conserved. Significant phylogenetic conservatism of interaction patterns was equally likely to occur in symbiotic and non-symbiotic interactions, as well as in mutualistic and antagonistic interactions. Host-use differentiation among species was higher in phylogenetically conserved clades, irrespective of their generalization degree and taxonomic position within the tree of life. Our findings strongly suggest a shared pattern in the organization of biological systems through evolutionary time, mediated by marked conservatism of ecological interactions among taxa.
