The United Nations has declared 2021-2030 as the Decade of Restoration Ecology. However, leading experts in the field identify that many projects are less successful than necessary (Lindenmayer, 2020). There are many explanations for this lack of success. For my time at the KLI, I choose to focus on the lack of connection between restoration practice and evolutionary theory. The resources available for restoration projects are finite, and a successful restoration attempt must be one that is effective long-term, especially in the face of global climate change. These factors impart contextual restrictions on the theories and conceptual frameworks one ought to use to guide interventions. Primarily, my question is an epistemological one: Which theoretical considerations have been employed in past restoration attempts that may have led to their failure, and which theoretical choices ought to be made to guide successful interventions?
Furthermore, my preliminary research has led me to the conclusion that the conceptual underpinnings of eco-evo-devo are theoretically useful to address this problem. The recognition of restoration ecology as an evolutionary field is not new (Stockwell et al., 2016), yet its traditionally gene-centered approach is insufficient to address the previously noted challenges. Rather, eco-evo-devo, with its focus on developmental plasticity, inclusive inheritance, and symbiosis, forms the proper framework for predicting the long-term fate of a population (Laland et al., 2015). This project has clear societal relevance for the long-term protection of our ecosystems and global biodiversity. Moreover, it has the additional scientific relevance of providing an empirical testing ground for eco-evo-devo and the extended evolutionary synthesis in general.