Scaling in ecosystems and the linkage of macroecological laws.
Scaling provides an elegant framework for understanding power-law behavior and deducing relationships between critical exponents. We demonstrate that scaling theory can be generalized to develop a framework for the analysis of diverse empirical macroecological relationships traditionally treated as independent. Our mathematical arguments predict links between the species-area relationship, the relative species abundance and community size spectra in excellent accord with empirical data.
Banavar
Jayanth R
JR
Department of Physics, 104 Davey Laboratory, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802, USA. banavar@psu.edu
Damuth
John
J
Maritan
Amos
A
Rinaldo
Andrea
A
D004463:Ecology / Q000379:methods*; D017753:Ecosystem; D008954:Models, Biological; D015233:Models, Statistical