how to dump a stacktrace when a specific Java method is called?

Use Byteman. It can inject tracing code into a running server pretty easily. Our support team love it. http://www.jboss.org/byteman

"Does anybody know if we can implement some kind of "listener" in the JVM that would detect when a specific method is called and dump the stack trace?

This is a production system, so if the solution is a debugger we would need to have something that has very limited impact on performance."

These requirements are contradictory. Dumping the stack is expensive, no matter how you do it. IMO, what you really need to do is set up a test server and run your investigations there.

FWIW, the simplest and probably least expensive way to do this kind of thing is to insert one of these as the first statement of the method:

    log.info("Method called", new Throwable());

    new Throwable("method called").printStackTrace(System.out);

Depending upon how many different locations the method is called from, you could put a wrapper around it and do a stack dump from within the wrapper.

Something I do for simplicity is add the following line to my code

log.info("Method called", new Throwable("HERE"));

Instead of an instance of the Class in question, use an instance of java.lang.reflect.Proxy. This allows you to intercept all method calls and do something before forwarding them to the instance.

I think this is the heart of at least 1 AOP framework.

Use Thread.currentThread().getStackTrace()

I used for this purpose the java instrumentation api.

With the java instrumentation api you can modify any class bytecode at runtime and you can add some code (like AOP). A example of how to instrument java classes and methods at runtime using javassist is on my github.

https://github.com/kreyssel/maven-examples/tree/master/javaagent

You can simply modify the LoggerAgent.java and remove the logging statements and add your Thread.dumpStack().

The only thing you change in your production runtime is to add the agent jar to the java command line.

-javaagent:jarpath[=options]

Another blog post you can read here.