Big Questions in Ecology and Evolution | Science
Big Questions in Ecology and Evolution is a new book by Thomas Sherratt and David Wilkinson. From the review in Science by Hanna Kokko:
[O]ne of the book's more serious messages is that ecology and evolution are so intertwined that neither can be understood without considering the other. I found myself wholeheartedly agreeing with the suggestion that G. Evelyn Hutchinson's famous phrase about the "ecological theatre and the evolutionary play" depicts a hierarchy that perhaps should be replaced with something more egalitarian.
Update: From the article "Speciation affects ecosystems" by Ole Seehausen in the April 30 issue of Nature:
Differences between ecosystems affect the rate and direction of evolutionary diversification. But does evolutionary diversification affect the functioning of ecosystems? On page 1167 of this issue, Harmon et al. present experimental data from work with predatory stickleback fish that show that it does.This insight comes at an opportune moment, as ecosystems ecology and evolutionary biology have existed separately for more than a century, and their integration is long overdue. ...
Implicit in this exciting news is a warning relating to the rapid, human-induced collapse of species diversity in ecosystems dominated by recent adaptive radiations. If the effects of adaptive radiation on the function of natural ecosystems are similar to those observed in the mesocosms, we should expect to see the collapse of nascent species diversity leading to severe perturbations in ecosystem functioning — a process that may in fact already be under way.
