Macroecology

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Macroecology is a subfield in ecology that uses a methodological approach that investigates the empirical patterns and mechanistic processes by which the particulate components of complex ecological systems generate emergent structures and dynamics [1] Unlike traditional ecology, which focuses on local and small-scale interactions, macroecology seeks to identify general emergent patterns within and across spatial and temporal scales.

One of the main tenets of macroecology is that, despite the apparent complexity and randomness of ecological systems, they exhibit a significant degree of order. This order is particularly evident in statistical patterns related to organism interactions, their relationships with the environment, and the emergent structures and dynamics of ecological systems. As put by Brown (1999), [1] "Despite their complexity, ecological systems are not haphazard collections of organisms interacting randomly. Instead, they exhibit a great deal of order: in the kinds of organisms that make up the system, like their interactions with each other and their nonliving environment, and especially in the emergent structure and dynamics of the system. This order is perhaps best revealed in certain statistical patterns." Lawton [2] aptly captures the essence of macroecology: "Macroecology ... seeks to get above the mind‐boggling details of local community assembly to find a bigger picture, whereby a kind of statistical order emerges from the scrum.” Thus, macroecology often aims to elucidate statistical patterns of abundance, distribution, and diversity across different biological scales. [3]

The term "macroecology" was first introduced by Venezuelan researchers Guillermo Sarmiento and Maximina Monasterio in 1971 [4] and was later adopted by James Brown and Brian Maurer in their 1989 paper in Science . [5]

Macroecology is not just a large-scale study; a macroecological approach can also be taken at small scales to study emergent behavior. [1] In essence, macroecology adopts a "top-down" approach, focusing on understanding the properties of entire systems (populations, communities, assemblages etc.) rather than individual components. It is akin to seeing the entire forest instead of individual trees, as Kevin Gaston and Tim Blackburn suggested. [6] Some critical areas of interest within macroecology include the study of species richness, latitudinal gradients in species diversity, the species-area curve, range size, body size, and species abundance. Specifically, the relationship between abundance and range size—exploring why some species are widespread and abundant while others are restricted and less common—has been a focal area of macroecological research. [3] [5]

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Body size and species richness</span>

The body size-species richness distribution is a pattern observed in the way taxa are distributed over large spatial scales. The number of species that exhibit small body size generally far exceed the number of species that are large-bodied. Macroecology has long sought to understand the mechanisms that underlie the patterns of biodiversity, such as the body size-species richness pattern.

Mechanistic models for niche apportionment are biological models used to explain relative species abundance distributions. These niche apportionment models describe how species break up resource pool in multi-dimensional space, determining the distribution of abundances of individuals among species. The relative abundances of species are usually expressed as a Whittaker plot, or rank abundance plot, where species are ranked by number of individuals on the x-axis, plotted against the log relative abundance of each species on the y-axis. The relative abundance can be measured as the relative number of individuals within species or the relative biomass of individuals within species.

Relative species abundance is a component of biodiversity and is a measure of how common or rare a species is relative to other species in a defined location or community. Relative abundance is the percent composition of an organism of a particular kind relative to the total number of organisms in the area. Relative species abundances tend to conform to specific patterns that are among the best-known and most-studied patterns in macroecology. Different populations in a community exist in relative proportions; this idea is known as relative abundance.

In macroecology and community ecology, an occupancy frequency distribution (OFD) is the distribution of the numbers of species occupying different numbers of areas. It was first reported in 1918 by the Danish botanist Christen C. Raunkiær in his study on plant communities. The OFD is also known as the species-range size distribution in literature.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Brown, J.H. 1999. Macroecology: progress and prospect. Oikos (1999): 3-14.
  2. Lawton, J. H. (1999). Are there general laws in ecology? Oikos, 84, 177192. https://doi.org/10.2307/3546712
  3. 1 2 Brown, J.H. (1995). Macroecology. University of Chicago Press. ISBN   978-0-226-07614-0.
  4. Levin, S. A., Carpenter, S. R., Godfray, H. C. J., Kinzig, A. P., Loreau, M., Losos, J. B., ... & Wilcove, D. S. (Eds.). (2012). The Princeton guide to ecology. Princeton University Press.
  5. 1 2 Brown, James H.; Maurer, Brian A. (1989-03-03). "Macroecology: The Division of Food and Space Among Species on Continents". Science. 243 (4895): 1145–1150. Bibcode:1989Sci...243.1145B. doi:10.1126/science.243.4895.1145. ISSN   0036-8075. PMID   17799895. S2CID   14508955.
  6. Gaston, K.J. and T.M. Blackburn. 2000. Pattern and Process in Macroecology. Blackwell Science. ISBN   0-632-05653-3

Scientific journals covering macroecology: