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What is macroecology?

What is macroecology?. Macroecology deals with ecological patterns and processes at various scales. In particular macroecology tries to identify and to explain regional to global patterns of species diversity, spatial and temporal distributions and energy use.

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What is macroecology?

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  1. What is macroecology? Macroecology deals with ecological patterns and processes at various scales In particular macroecology tries to identify and to explain regional to global patterns of species diversity, spatial and temporaldistributions and energy use Macroecology is closely linked to biogeography and evolutionary ecology

  2. Biogeography Tries to understand large scale distributions of living thinks Evolutionary Ecology Tries to understand patterns of species diversity through evolutionary history Macroecology Tries to link both disciplines and to explain larges scale ecological patterns and processes in space and time Important: The focus is on explanationand model building and not on simple description. Modern ecology is not a faunistic or floristic exercise. It uses larges scale data sets to build and verify its theories about the causes of observed patterns. A standard method of macroecology is meta-analysis.

  3. Macroecology has deep ecological roots but only recent times saw the tranformation to an analytical explanatory science Land plant of Britain from Watson (1859) Species – area relationship Neutral models, Ecological scaling and Metabolic theory Explanation Description

  4. Ecological processes Evolutionary processes Speciation ExtinctionClimatic processes Dispersal MetapopulationsMetacommunities Evolutionary processes Ecological processes FluctuationsLocal species turnover Speciation ExtinctionGeological processes PredationDisturbanceCompetition Dispersal MetapopulationsSpatial processes

  5. Lecture program • Introduction • Fundamental relationships in macroecology • Metabolic theory • Diversity and productivity I • Diversity and productivity II • Latitudinal gradients • Patterns at ecological time scales • Local and regional diversities • Fragmentedlandscapes • Neutral models in macroecology • Body sizes • Invasive species • Global change I • Global change II • Phylogeny and ecology

  6. Scources of knowledge Literature: Brown JH 1995. Macroecology.Univ. Press, Chicago. Gaston KJ, Blackburn TM 2000. Pattern and Process in Macroecology Blackwell Sci. Publ, Oxford. Blackburn TM, Gaston KJ (eds) 2003. Macroecology: Concepts and Consequences. Blackwell Scientific Publications, Oxford. Journals: Ecography Journal of Biogeography Diversity and Distributions Ecology Letters Global Ecology and Biogeography

  7. Internet sources: http://www.macroecology.org/ http://www.biome.group.shef.ac.uk/ The whole lecture is available at our workgroup homepage www.uni.torun.pl/~urichw http://www.ento.vt.edu/~sharov/PopEcol/popecol.html

  8. Other macroecological tools Analysis of large scale spatial data GIS methods Statistical methods for relating environmental variables to distribution maps Mantel test Spatial correlation Multidimensional scaling Analysis of climatological palaeontological data Time series analysis Spectral analysis Analysis of recent faunistic and floristic surveys Co-occurrence analysis Nestedness analysis

  9. Today’s reading What is macroecology?: http://www.macroecology.org Meta-analysis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta-analysis http://wilderdom.com/research/meta-analysis.html Alexander v. Humboldt: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_von_Humboldt

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