12 - On the integration of community ecology and evolutionary biology: Historical perspectives and current prospects

Abstract

This chapter provides a personal reflection on a topic that is both perennial and persistently unresolved—namely, the relationship between ecology and evolution— with a focus on the community level of organization. The structure and dynamics of communities are likely to reflect the imprint of historical processes, including evolution. Conversely, the pattern and rate of evolution is likely to be influenced by community processes. Some general reflections on the relationship between community ecology and evolution are provided. A quick tour through high points in the history of this relationship, from the early years of the twentieth century to the present, using as a point of departure key documents that defined the discipline of community ecology and emphasizing the evolutionary perspectives taken by the authors have been presented. There are four frontiers in understanding the earth's biological diversity. Two of these frontiers are as much frontiers in evolutionary biology as they are in ecology. It was argued that understanding the “dynamics of coalescence in complex communities” was a key desideratum. Another important frontier is to understand “evolutionary and historical determinants of ecological processes.” There has also been an under appreciation of the potential for rapid evolutionary change, of the need to incorporate organism-driven change in the environment into descriptions of evolution, and finally, of the potential for ecological forces themselves to determine whether a scientist observes stasis versus rapid evolution in species' ecological traits.