Functional Ecology 2007 21, 444–454 444 © 2007 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2007 British Ecological Society Blackwell Publishing Ltd Eco-evolutionary conservation biology: contemporary evolution and the dynamics of persistence MICHAEL T. KINNISON*† and NELSON G. HAIRSTON JR‡ *Department of Biological Sciences, University of Maine, Orono, ME 04469, USA, ‡Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA Summary 1. Natural and human mediated perturbations present challenges to the fate of populations but fuel contemporary evolution (evolution over humanly observable time-scales). Here we ask if such evolution is sufficient to make the difference between population extinction and persistence. 2. To answer this question requires a shift from the usual focus on trait evolution to the emergent ‘eco-evolutionary’ dynamics that arise through interactions of evolution, its fitness consequences and population abundance. 3. By combining theory, models and insights from empirical studies of contemporary evolution, we provide an assessment of three contexts: persistence of populations in situ, persistence of colonising populations, and persistence under gene flow and in metapopulations. 4. Contemporary evolution can likely rescue some, but not all, populations facing environmental change. Populations may fail partly because of the demographic cost of selection. 5. Contemporary evolution that initiates positive population growth, such as selective founding processes, may create a ‘persistence vortex’ that overcomes the problems of small populations. 6. Complex, even shifting, relationships between gene flow and adaptation may aid the persistence of subpopulations as well as the persistence and expansion of metapopulations. 7. An eco-evolutionary perspective suggests that we expand our focus beyond the acute problems of threatened populations and growing invasions, to consider how contemporary evolutionary mechanics contribute to such problems in the first place or affect their resolution. Key-words: extinction, invasion, metapopulation, rapid evolution, regulation Functional Ecology (2007) 21, 444–454 doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2435.2007.01278.x Introduction Extinction has long been recognised as an import- ant process in evolution (Darwin & Wallace 1858; Simpson 1944; Gould 1989). Most extinctions are seen as failures of species to respond adaptively to rapidly – in some instances catastrophically – changing environ- ments. Adaptive evolution clearly failed to preserve the many species that disappeared during both mass extinction events and the more or less continuous localised ‘background extinctions’ ( sensu Jablonski 1986) that together have produced the history of life. The greater impact of mass extinction during the Phanerozoic relative to background extinction has even led some to suggest that adaptive evolution plays relatively little role in explaining many patterns of biotic diversity (Flessa & Jablonski 1985; Gould 1989). Whereas it is true that evolution has clearly not rescued all species or populations from extinction, explorations of extinction probabilities based on the limitations of selection and response stand in stark contrast to a growing literature demonstrating that surprising amounts of adaptive evolution occurs in the wild and laboratory within a human life span (reviewed by Hendry & Kinnison 1999; Bone & Farres 2001; Hairston et al . 2005). Indeed, empirical evidence and theory show that rates of such contemporary evolution can be much faster than those averaged over paleonto- logical scales (e.g. Gingerich 1983; Reznick et al . 1997; †Author to whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: michael.kinnison@umit.maine.edu