Biologo

PERSPECTIVES

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host–parasitoid community, J. Anim. Ecol. 63,
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information systems in applied insect

Rapid evolution as an ecological process
John N. Thompson
Rapid evolution of interspecific interactions (during a timespan of about 100 years)
has the potential to be an important influence on the ecological dynamics of
communities. However, despite the growing number of examples, rapid evolution isstill not a standard working hypothesis for many ecological studies on the dynamics
of population structure or the organization of communities. Analysis of rapid
evolution as an ecological process has the potential to make evolutionary ecology
one of the most central of applied biological sciences.
John Thompson is at the Depts of Botany and Zoology, Washington State University,
Pullman, WA99164-4238, USA (jnt@wsu.edu).

E

cological and evolutionary processes
are often thought to occupy different
timescales, so much so that it is common
to hear biologists talk about ecological
time and evolutionary time. Indeed, there
are processes that occur at very long timescales that are far beyond anything that
any of us commonly calls ecological time.
But several decades of studyin evolutionary ecology and evolutionary genetics
have indicated that the timescales of ecological and evolutionary processes overlap for many of the questions posed by
physiological ecologists, population ecologists, community ecologists and ecosystem ecologists. Metapopulation structure
can rapidly shape and reshape the genetic
structure of species at different geographical scales, andinterspecific interactions
have now been shown to coevolve over
the timescale of decades.
Nevertheless, much ecological research
continues to be carried out without considering – as one of a group of working hypotheses – whether some of the observed
patterns and ecological dynamics are the
result of rapid evolutionary change within
and among populations. The National Center for EcologicalAnalysis and Synthesis
in Santa Barbara, California, USA, recently
sponsored a workshop on rapid evolution and the organization of biodiversity.
Eighteen participants working at the interface of evolution and ecology discussed
what we know and what we do not know
TREE vol. 13, no. 8 August 1998

about the links between the ecology and
evolution of interspecific interactions over
a timescale ofabout 100 years. This timespan was chosen because it is the timescale at which much ecological research
on community dynamics is carried out and
at which many conservation decisions are
made.

What we know
When Endler1 summarized and evaluated the known examples of natural selection in the wild, researchers responded in
two ways, depending on their expectations:
either there was animpressive list of known
examples or there was a very small list of
known examples. Since Endler’s review,
the list of examples has continued to grow
and now includes increasingly precise
evolutionary analyses of long-term field
experiments2,3 and observations of populations under changing conditions4,5. These
studies of natural populations show that
ecologically important evolutionary change...