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Specific mechanisms generating diversity in the insect and plant associations involve microbe-mediated effects on insect-plant interaction. Phytoplasmas, a diverse group of plant-pathogens, and their hosts provide a new model for understanding how interactions among distantly related but ecologically associated taxa can drive evolutionary diversification. Our results showed that although phytoplasmas and their hosts occur in most terrestrial biomes and have evolved together over the past 300+Ma, major gaps in knowledge of their associations remain because most prior research focused on strategies for mitigating adverse effects of phytoplasma diseases in agroecosystems. I will discuss an alternative way to predict host-pathogen associations.