Biogeography and ecology: towards the integration of two disciplines

    Authors

    R. E. Ricklefs;D. G. Jenkins

    Comments

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    Abbreviated Journal Title

    Philos. Trans. R. Soc. B-Biol. Sci.

    Keywords

    history; macroecology; niche; phylogeny; regional community; species; sorting; LATITUDINAL DIVERSITY GRADIENT; GREAT AMERICAN INTERCHANGE; PLANT-SPECIES RICHNESS; WATER-ENERGY DYNAMICS; NEW-WORLD BIRDS; COMMUNITY ECOLOGY; NICHE CONSERVATISM; PHYLOGENETIC STRUCTURE; EVOLUTIONARY DIVERSIFICATION; MOLECULAR PHYLOGENIES; Biology

    Abstract

    Although ecology and biogeography had common origins in the natural history of the nineteenth century, they diverged substantially during the early twentieth century as ecology became increasingly hypothesis-driven and experimental. This mechanistic focus narrowed ecology's purview to local scales of time and space, and mostly excluded large-scale phenomena and historical explanations. In parallel, biogeography became more analytical with the acceptance of plate tectonics and the development of phylogenetic systematics, and began to pay more attention to ecological factors that influence large-scale distributions. This trend towards unification exposed problems with terms such as 'community' and 'niche,' in part because ecologists began to view ecological communities as open systems within the contexts of history and geography. The papers in this issue represent biogeographic and ecological perspectives and address the general themes of (i) the niche, (ii) comparative ecology and macroecology, (iii) community assembly, and (iv) diversity. The integration of ecology and biogeography clearly is a natural undertaking that is based on evolutionary biology, has developed its own momentum, and which promises novel, synthetic approaches to investigating ecological systems and their variation over the surface of the Earth. We offer suggestions on future research directions at the intersection of biogeography and ecology.

    Journal Title

    Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences

    Volume

    366

    Issue/Number

    1576

    Publication Date

    1-1-2011

    Document Type

    Review

    Language

    English

    First Page

    2438

    Last Page

    2448

    WOS Identifier

    WOS:000292819200010

    ISSN

    0962-8436

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