The Question
Understanding biodiversity and its dynamics is one of the most critical issues of our time. To fully grasp these changes, we need an integrative eco-evolutionary (eco-evo) framework that bridges ecology and evolution to move beyond the current dominant approaches in the natural sciences — i.e., either evolutionary or ecological. Such an approach should consider four key elements: the main components of biodiversity (e.g., biological groups), the forces and processes shaping them, their spatio-temporal framework, and their environment. Within this context, specific questions must be addressed and integrated into the big picture. One prominent example concerns the relative roles of phenotypic plasticity and genetic variation — how quickly each responds, on what functional basis, and with what consequences for eco-evolutionary dynamics.
The Approach
The project Eco-Evolution: An Overarching Framework to Make Sense of Biodiversity Dynamics will develop three complementary lines of research using a highly interdisciplinary approach:
- Studying eco-evolution in action: In eukaryotes, the researchers will build an exemplary case study based on a simple ecological network in the French Antilles freshwaters. In bacteria, they will compare phenotypic plasticity and genetic variation.
- Retrospective thinking: The scientists will reconstruct a minimal eco-evo theory for an (early) world existing solely of bacteria and compare it with current eco-evo theory.
- Reframing the eco-evolutionary paradigm: The researchers will critically examine the forces and processes driving the integration of ecology and evolution from epistemological and analytical perspectives.
By combining empirical case studies, theoretical reconstruction and philosophical reflection, the project aims to contribute an integrative framework for making sense of biodiversity dynamics across scales and through time.
The Eco-Evolution project is being led by Philippe Jarne at the Center for Evolutionary and Functional Ecology (CEFE) in Montpellier, France, which is part of the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS).
Feature image: The freshwater snail Tarebia granifera, an invader in the French Antilles and the focus of the long-term study (shell size: ca. 2 cm). (Photo: Jean-Pierre Pointier)
