Study
Complex cocktails: the evolutionary novelty of venoms
Casewell, Nicholas R.; Wüster, Wolfgang; Vonk, Freek J.; Harrison, Robert A.; Fry, Bryan G.
Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 2013
Reviews the origin and composition of animal venoms across lineages, covering how ordinary body proteins are recruited into venom systems and how venom composition varies with diet, geography, age and sex.
- Studied in
- Animalia
- Sample size
- review across venomous animal lineages
Venoms are complex mixtures of many proteins, most recruited from existing physiological functions, and their composition varies substantially within species — between populations, between adults and juveniles, and with the prey being taken.
What it means
The authors' reading, and ours. Where they differ, that difference is the point.
How the authors put it
Venom is better understood as a variable, diet-linked trait than as a fixed species-level property.
How NatureHQ reads it
The record that stops NatureHQ from writing "the venom of species X is neurotoxic". Venoms are mixtures, they differ between populations of one species, and in several species a juvenile’s venom differs from an adult’s because the prey does. The single-category caricature is convenient and wrong.
- A review; composition data are far better for medically important snakes than for most venomous animals.
- The functional consequence of much of the variation is not established.
What this study is used for on NatureHQ
One study can inform several subjects. Here is everywhere this one is cited.
Venom
There is no such thing as "the venom of" a species. Venoms are mixtures of many proteins, and their composition differs between populations, between adults and young, and with what the animal is eating.
Venom
Venom was not built from nothing. The same handful of protein families — digestive enzymes, immune proteins, signalling peptides — have been recruited into venom independently in many unrelated lineages.
Chemical defence
Spraying, bleeding, frothing, oozing and stinging are not the same thing. Only the ones that put a substance through a wound are venom, and most chemical defences do not.
Published by: Elsevier journalsPublished in an Elsevier journal.
doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2012.10.020
Checked against Crossref on 2026-09-28, and they agree on the title, the authors and the year.
NatureHQ summarises research in its own words and does not reproduce published text. Reviewed 2026-09-03.