History: Do evolutionary and ecological processes occur at the same timescales?
This doesn't directly answer your question but my current research is on building models that combine ecological and evolutionary processes. Thompson (1998) is one of the earliest papers to talk about rapid evolution on ecological time-scales. And also a recent paper highlighting the interactions was Schoener (2011). 

Perhaps reading through these two papers and looking at their references will give you a better idea of when the shift in thought started.