Macroecology is the subfield of
ecology
Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overlaps wi ...
that deals with the study of relationships between organisms and their
environment
Environment most often refers to:
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* Natural environment, all living and non-living things occurring naturally
* Biophysical environment, the physical and biological factors along with their chemical interactions that affect an organism or ...
at large spatial scales to characterise and explain statistical patterns of abundance, distribution and diversity.
The term was coined in a small monograph published in Spanish in 1971 by Guillermo Sarmiento and Maximina Monasterio, two Venezuelan researchers working in tropical savanna ecosystems
[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.] and later used by
James Brown
James Joseph Brown (May 3, 1933 – December 25, 2006) was an American singer, dancer, musician, record producer and bandleader. The central progenitor of funk music and a major figure of 20th century music, he is often referred to by the honor ...
of the
University of New Mexico
The University of New Mexico (UNM; es, Universidad de Nuevo México) is a public research university in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Founded in 1889, it is the state's flagship academic institution and the largest by enrollment, with over 25,400 ...
and Brian Maurer of
Michigan State University
Michigan State University (Michigan State, MSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in East Lansing, Michigan. It was founded in 1855 as the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan, the fi ...
in a 1989 paper in ''
Science
Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...
''.
Macroecology approaches the idea of studying
ecosystem
An ecosystem (or ecological system) consists of all the organisms and the physical environment with which they interact. These biotic and abiotic components are linked together through nutrient cycles and energy flows. Energy enters the syste ...
s using a "top down" approach. It seeks understanding through the study of the properties of the system as a whole; Kevin Gaston and Tim Blackburn make the analogy to seeing the forest for the trees.
[Gaston, K.J. and T.M. Blackburn. 2000. ''Pattern and Process in Macroecology''. Blackwell Science. ]
Macroecology examines how global development in climate change affect
wildlife
Wildlife refers to domestication, undomesticated animal species (biology), species, but has come to include all organisms that grow or live wilderness, wild in an area without being species, introduced by humans. Wildlife was also synonymous ...
populations. Classic ecological questions amenable to study through the techniques of macroecology include questions of
species richness
Species richness is the number of different species represented in an ecological community, landscape or region. Species richness is simply a count of species, and it does not take into account the abundances of the species or their relative a ...
,
latitudinal gradients in species diversity
Species richness, or biodiversity, increases from the poles to the tropics for a wide variety of terrestrial and marine organisms, often referred to as the latitudinal diversity gradient. The latitudinal diversity gradient is one of the most widel ...
, the
species-area curve, range size, body size, and
species abundance
In ecology, local abundance is the relative representation of a species in a particular ecosystem. It is usually measured as the number of individuals found per sample. The ratio of abundance of one species to one or multiple other species livin ...
. For example, the relationship between abundance and range size (why species that maintain large local population sizes tend to be widely distributed, while species that are less abundant tend to have restricted ranges) has received much attention.
References
External links
Scientific journals covering macroecology:
''Global Ecology and Biogeography''
''Ecography''
''Diversity and Distribution''''Evolutionary Ecology Research''
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Subfields of ecology
Systems ecology