Evolutionary and ecological sorting in space

The last fifteen years have witnessed an increasing realization that ecological dynamics operating at coarse spatial scales have important ecological consequences. One of the more exciting ideas that has ensued is the "metacommunity" (Figure 1), a concept that has contributed significant insights about population, community and ecosystems ecology (see Leibold et al. 2004 for a recent review, Holyoak et al. 2005 for the scope of this idea). To date, however, the metacommunity concept has been evaluated in a purely ecological context. Nevertheless, close parallels and obvious interrelations exist between ecological and evolutionary dynamics at multiple spatial scales (McPeek and Gomulkiewicz 2005). Mounting evidence suggests that evolutionary dynamics can occur on time scales similar to those involving ecological dynamics (Cousyn et al. 2001, Kinnison and Hendry 2001, Grant and Grant 2002, Yoshida et al. 2003). If so, metacommunity and evolutionary dynamics may interact strongly. Yet, we are only now beginning to understand this interaction. While metacommunity ecology will continue to contribute interesting insights about a diverse array of ecological phenomena, we foresee that these insights will soon be constrained by our limited knowledge about how ecological and evolutionary processes interact in metacommunities. We seek to bring together scientists from diverse backgrounds to synthesize current knowledge and generate new understanding about evolutionary and metacommunity dynamics. We intend to 1) develop and refine an evolving metacommunity framework, 2) explore the potential for emergent dynamics by incorporating evolution into existing metacommunity models; 3) evaluate how multi-species interactions impact community evolution and dynamics; and 4) develop tools to test and apply the theory. The proposed synthesis of evolutionary and metacommunity theory promises to improve our understanding of species coexistence and provide strategies for preserving biodiversity and controlling rapidly evolving pests and pathogens.