Towards a general, population-level understanding of eco-evolutionary change

Abstract

Most population-level studies of eco-evolutionary dynamics assume that evolutionary change occurs in response to ecological change and vice versa. However, a growing number of papers report simultaneous ecological and evolutionary change, suggesting that the eco-evolutionary consequences of environmental change for populations can only be fully understood through the simultaneous analysis of statistics used to describe both ecological and evolutionary dynamics. Here we argue that integral projection models (IPM), and matrix approximations of them, provide a powerful approach to integrate population ecology, life history theory, and evolution. We discuss key questions in population biology that can be examined using these models, the answers to which are essential for a general, population-level understanding of eco-evolutionary change.