Separating macroecological pattern and process: comparing ecological, economic, and geological systems.
Theories of biodiversity rest on several macroecological patterns describing the relationship between species abundance and diversity. A central problem is that all theories make similar predictions for these patterns despite disparate assumptions. A troubling implication is that these patterns may not reflect anything unique about organizational principles of biology or the functioning of ecological systems. To test this, we analyze five datasets from ecological, economic, and geological systems that describe the distribution of objects across categories in the United States. At the level of functional form ('first-order effects'), these patterns are not unique to ecological systems, indicating they may reveal little about biological process. However, we show that mechanism can be better revealed in the scale-dependency of first-order patterns ('second-order effects'). These results provide a roadmap for biodiversity theory to move beyond traditional patterns, and also suggest ways in which macroecological theory can constrain the dynamics of economic systems.
Sky School, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, United States of America.
Benjamin
B
Blonder
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, United States of America.
Lindsey
L
Sloat
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, United States of America; Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States of America.
Brian J
BJ
Enquist
School of Biology and Ecology, University of Maine, Orono, Maine, United States of America.
Brian
B
McGill
D044822:Biodiversity; D016208:Databases, Factual; D004467:Economics; D017753:Ecosystem; D005844:Geology; D011157:Population Dynamics