Title

Biogeography and ecology: towards the integration of two disciplines

Authors

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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