Ecology and evolution on the banks of the St Lawrence.

The population biologist John Harper (1967) wrote that ‘the theory of evolution by natural selection is an ecological theory, founded on ecological observation by perhaps the greatest of all ecologists’. More than 40 yr since this observation, it is surprising that the professional societies devoted to the study of ecology and evolution still remain largely distinct (for example, consider the Society for the Study of Evolution and European Society for Evolutionary Biology vis à vis the Ecological Society for America and European Ecological Federation), notwithstanding the American Society of Naturalists. While still relatively young, the Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution (CSEE) is as a prominent exception, with a diverse membership and an emerging tradition of intellectually rich meetings that integrate ecology and evolutionary biology. The annual meeting of the society, recently held at Université Laval, illustrated the potential synergy available from a meeting covering diverse topics such as theoretical ecology, comparative biology, ecological genomics, molecular population genetics, population biology, and ecosystem ecology.