Integrating Micro- and Macroevolutionary Processes in Community Ecology

Neuhauser et al. (2003) and Whitham et al. (2003) clearly demonstrate the powerful insights that can be gained from examining the evolutionary process in an ecological context by combining community ecology and population genetics. These approaches show how organism interactions can influence rates and direction of evolution, and how genetic variation within populations can influence patterns of species abundance and diversity within communities. In doing so, they provide insights into microevolutionary processes in rapidly evolving organisms and demonstrate the far-reaching consequences of intraspecific genetic variation for community structure. This merging of ecology and genetics invites an even larger view, that of integrating both microand macroevolutionary processes in community ecology. The incorporation of phylogenetic analysis in community ecology (e.g., Brooks and McLennan 1991, Ricklefs and Schluter 1993, Losos 1996, McPeek and Miller 1996; reviewed by Webb et al. 2002) has arisen parallel to the emergence of community genetics. Just as the development of quantitative and population genetic techniques for examining evolutionary change within populations has made community genetics possible, so has the development of modern phylogenetic and comparative methods allowed advances in phylogenetic community ecology. These parallel advances allow, for the first time, a synthetic ecological perspective that incorporates an understanding of both the microand macroevolutionary processes that influence community structure. Ecological communities are assemblages of co-occurring species that potentially interact with one another. They are the result of not only present ecological processes, but also past and continuing evolutionary processes (McPeek and Miller 1996). Even the agricultural communities studied by Neuhauser et al. (2003) reflect the evolutionary history and continuing evolution of their constituent organisms. The genetic