Dynamic nature of traits has been increasingly recognized as a key but previously overlooked element when we try to advance our understanding of populations and communities. Traits are temporally and spatially dynamic due to various mechanisms and processes including phenotypic plasticity, rapid evolutionary change, gene flow, local extinction, geographic mosaic of coevolution, etc. Ecological dynamics of populations and communities can lead to the dynamic changes of traits, which in turn have strong influences on the population and community dynamics. This feedback between trait dynamics and ecological dynamics has been a growing topic in ecology, yet our understanding of the feedback is still limited and we don’t know much about when and how much the eco-evolutionary feedback is important in populations and communities. In this session, we will explore the frontier of our understanding of the eco-evolutionary feedback by several talks including the invited one by Dr. Ellen van Velzen from University of Potsdam, Germany. Also, Dr. Masato Yamamichi (Kyoto University) will give a comment on this topic.

The session will be composed of a session introduction by Yoshida, four talks listed below (25 min each) and a comment by Dr. Yamamichi (10 min).