title: The glocal forest.
abstract: Spatial ecological patterns reflect the underlying processes that shape the structure of species and communities. Mechanisms like intra- and inter-specific competition, dispersal and host-pathogen interactions can act over a wide range of scales. Yet, the inference of such processes from patterns is a challenging task. Here we call attention to a quite unexpected phenomenon in the extensively studied tropical forest at the Barro-Colorado Island (BCI): the spatial deployment of (almost) all tree species is statistically equivalent, once distances are normalized by ℓ0, the typical distance between neighboring conspecific trees. Correlation function, cluster statistics and nearest-neighbor distance distribution become species-independent after this rescaling. Global observables (species frequencies) and local spatial structure appear to be interrelated. This "glocality" suggests a radical interpretation of recent experiments that show a correlation between species' abundance and the negative feedback among conspecifics. For the forest to be glocal, the negative feedback must govern spatial patterns over all scales.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Bar-Ilan University Ramat-Gan, Israel.
authors.forename: Efrat
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Seri
authors.affiliation: Porter School of Environmental Studies, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv, Israel.
authors.forename: Elad
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Shtilerman
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Bar-Ilan University Ramat-Gan, Israel.
authors.forename: Nadav M
authors.initials: NM
authors.lastname: Shnerb
mesh_terms: D044822:Biodiversity; D016000:Cluster Analysis; D065928:Forests; D008954:Models, Biological; D014197:Trees / Q000254:growth & development