Eco-evolutionary feedbacks in community and ecosystem ecology: interactions between the ecological theatre and the evolutionary play

Abstract

Interactions between natural selection and environmental change are well recognized and sit at the core of ecology and evolutionary biology. Reciprocal interactions between ecology and evolution, eco-evolutionary feedbacks, are less well studied, even though they may be critical for understanding the evolution of biological diversity, the structure of communities and the function of ecosystems. Eco-evolutionary feedbacks require that populations alter their environment (niche construction) and that those changes in the environment feed back to influence the subsequent evolution of the population. There is strong evidence that organisms influence their environment through predation, nutrient excretion and habitat modification, and that populations evolve in response to changes in their environment at time-scales congruent with ecological change (contemporary evolution). Here, we outline how the niche construction and contemporary evolution interact to alter the direction of evolution and the structure and function of communities and ecosystems. We then present five empirical systems that highlight important characteristics of eco-evolutionary feedbacks: rotifer-algae chemostats; alewife-zooplankton interactions in lakes; guppy life-history evolution and nutrient cycling in streams; avian seed predators and plants; and tree leaf chemistry and soil processes. The alewifezooplankton system provides the most complete evidence for eco-evolutionary feedbacks, but other systems highlight the potential for eco-evolutionary feedbacks in a wide variety of natural systems.

Evolution mediates the effects of apex predation on aquatic food webs

“…Yet, populations might often adapt locally. Evolutionary divergence among antagonistic selection regimes within the same region can create and maintain trait differences sufficient to alter ecological patterns [7][8][9]11,12]. Here, I show how the adaptation of the spotted salamander can mediate the top-down effects of an apex predator.…”

“…Ecologists increasingly recognize the value of understanding evolutionary as well as ecological factors underlying community dynamics [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12]. Evolutionary differentiation has been shown to alter pairwise species interactions [13], communities [14][15][16][17] and ecosystems [16,[18][19][20].…”

The overfishing debate: an eco-evolutionary perspective

“…Overfishing shapes the evolution of harvested populations directly, but ecological changes caused by overfishing can also impact evolution indirectly, via eco-evolutionary feedbacks [2]. For example, widespread population declines in overfished top predators can shift natural selection acting on prey species.…”

“…Largely missing from this debate is the recent observation that fisheries harvest is causing rapid evolutionary changes in harvested populations. The nascent field of eco-evolutionary dynamics focuses on understanding interactions between ecological and evolutionary processes occurring in contemporary time [2]. An eco-evolutionary perspective on overfishing is broadly informative because it explicitly recognizes that contemporary evolution is intertwined with population, community and ecosystem processes [3]; these are the same ecological processes that underlie prevailing definitions of overfishing.…”

Adaptation and habitat selection in the eco-evolutionary process

“…But we generally lack evolutionary projections even though it is increasingly acknowledged that ecology and evolution are intertwined in a single eco-evolutionary process [8][9][10]. Studies on a variety of model systems document clearly the to-and-fro of ecoevolutionary dynamics [11] and the resulting feedback between ecology and evolution [12].…”