Evolutionary Ecological Genomics

Abstract

The recognition that evolution can happen on ecological timescales (Hairston et al. 2005; Pelletier et al. 2009; Ellner et al. 2011; Becks et al. 2012) has prompted the integration of ecology and evolution, while easier access to high-throughput sequencing technologies has increased the number of genetic nonmodel species entering the ‘omics’ era (e.g. Turner et al. 2010; Colbourne et al. 2011; Jones et al. 2012). We are now in a position to identify the genetic basis of adaptation and the mechanisms of adaptive responses in the wild. It nonetheless remains a challenge to go beyond descriptive measures of patterns of genetic variation and to identify the evolutionary processes driving species adaptation and evolution. This special issue represents a broad cross-section of research into evolutionary adaptation at the genetic level. The approaches used vary from classic QTL studies to RAD sequencing and RNAseq. Given the rapid advance of sequencing technology, we fully expect that ‘genomic’ as defined here will be merely ‘genetic’ in a few years, but we nonetheless hope that the results and methods described in this special issue will serve as a blueprint for future work in this field.