Ecography最新文献

{"title":"PondNet – towards a global network of experiments on the effects of climate change on aquatic ecosystems","authors":"Miguel G. Matias,&nbsp;Dominique Gravel,&nbsp;Jonathan M. Chase,&nbsp;Carla Pinto- Cruz,&nbsp;David García- Callejas,&nbsp;M. Thomas P. Gilbert,&nbsp;Mathew A. Leibold,&nbsp;Dora Neto,&nbsp;Cátia L. Pereira,&nbsp;Carlos Ramos,&nbsp;Pedro M. Raposeiro,&nbsp;Alejandro Rozenfeld,&nbsp;Katarzyna Sroczynska,&nbsp;David R. Vieites,&nbsp;Guy Woodward,&nbsp;Miguel B. Araújo","doi":"10.1002/ecog.07450","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/ecog.07450","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Global change is reshaping the distribution of biodiversity and the functioning of ecosystems. Predicting the long-term consequences of such changes remains a challenge due to a need for a clear understanding of the mechanisms underpinning ecosystem-level responses, as well as the role of geographical and environmental contingencies. We propose that these gaps can be addressed for freshwater ecosystems using a globally distributed experiment with standardized observations and disturbances. Specifically, this paper outlines the structure of PondNet – a globally distributed network of pond mesocosm experiments – designed to investigate how aquatic food webs respond to environmental change across broad geographical gradients. Pond mesocosms are affordable, low maintenance and easily replicated model ecosystems, with broadly predictable trophic architectures and community size-structure. PondNet would implement state-of-the-art environmental DNA biodiversity assessments for standardized taxonomic identification across biogeographical regions. A major operational bottleneck for developing a global understanding of environmental change effects on ecosystem functioning is the current lack of standardized experiments across coordinated infrastructures. We propose that by building on existing distributed experiments, we can assemble a modular participation scheme that ensures broad biogeographical coverage whilst accounting for varying levels of resource commitments from local hosts. PondNet aims to answer two overarching questions: 1) how general are community, food web and ecosystem-level responses to climate change across scales (i.e. local environmental gradients to biogeographical regions)?, and 2) to what extent are such responses contingent on local climate, environment, and regional species pools? PondNet will contribute to developing predictive models that can be adaptively improved from testing with data from globally replicated experiments and monitoring programmes.</p>","PeriodicalId":51026,"journal":{"name":"Ecography","volume":"2026 8","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2026-08-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecog.07450","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148667521","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"PondNet – towards a global network of experiments on the effects of climate change on aquatic ecosystems","authors":"Miguel G. Matias,&nbsp;Dominique Gravel,&nbsp;Jonathan M. Chase,&nbsp;Carla Pinto- Cruz,&nbsp;David García- Callejas,&nbsp;M. Thomas P. Gilbert,&nbsp;Mathew A. Leibold,&nbsp;Dora Neto,&nbsp;Cátia L. Pereira,&nbsp;Carlos Ramos,&nbsp;Pedro M. Raposeiro,&nbsp;Alejandro Rozenfeld,&nbsp;Katarzyna Sroczynska,&nbsp;David R. Vieites,&nbsp;Guy Woodward,&nbsp;Miguel B. Araújo","doi":"10.1002/ecog.07450","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/ecog.07450","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Global change is reshaping the distribution of biodiversity and the functioning of ecosystems. Predicting the long-term consequences of such changes remains a challenge due to a need for a clear understanding of the mechanisms underpinning ecosystem-level responses, as well as the role of geographical and environmental contingencies. We propose that these gaps can be addressed for freshwater ecosystems using a globally distributed experiment with standardized observations and disturbances. Specifically, this paper outlines the structure of PondNet – a globally distributed network of pond mesocosm experiments – designed to investigate how aquatic food webs respond to environmental change across broad geographical gradients. Pond mesocosms are affordable, low maintenance and easily replicated model ecosystems, with broadly predictable trophic architectures and community size-structure. PondNet would implement state-of-the-art environmental DNA biodiversity assessments for standardized taxonomic identification across biogeographical regions. A major operational bottleneck for developing a global understanding of environmental change effects on ecosystem functioning is the current lack of standardized experiments across coordinated infrastructures. We propose that by building on existing distributed experiments, we can assemble a modular participation scheme that ensures broad biogeographical coverage whilst accounting for varying levels of resource commitments from local hosts. PondNet aims to answer two overarching questions: 1) how general are community, food web and ecosystem-level responses to climate change across scales (i.e. local environmental gradients to biogeographical regions)?, and 2) to what extent are such responses contingent on local climate, environment, and regional species pools? PondNet will contribute to developing predictive models that can be adaptively improved from testing with data from globally replicated experiments and monitoring programmes.</p>","PeriodicalId":51026,"journal":{"name":"Ecography","volume":"2026 8","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2026-08-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecog.07450","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148667496","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Lagged climate-driven range shifts at species' leading, but not trailing, range edges revealed by multispecies seed addition experiment","authors":"Katie J. A. Goodwin,&nbsp;Nathalie I. Chardon,&nbsp;Kavya Pradhan,&nbsp;Janneke Hille Ris Lambers,&nbsp;Amy L. Angert","doi":"10.1111/ecog.07331","DOIUrl":"10.1111/ecog.07331","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Climate change is causing many species' ranges to shift upslope to higher elevations as species track their climatic requirements. However, many species have not shifted in pace with recent warming (i.e. ‘range stasis'), possibly due to demographic lags or microclimatic buffering. The ‘lagged-response hypothesis' posits that range stasis disguises an underlying climatic sensitivity if range shifts lag the velocity of climate change due to slow colonization (i.e. colonization credits) or mortality (i.e. extinction debt). Alternatively, the ‘microclimatic buffering hypothesis' proposes that small-scale variation within the landscape, such as canopy cover, creates patches of suitable habitat within otherwise unsuitable macroclimates that create climate refugia and buffer range contractions. We simultaneously test both hypotheses by combining a large seed addition experiment of 25 plant species across macro- and micro-scale climate gradients with adult occurrence records to compare patterns of seedling recruitment relative to adult ranges and microclimate in the North Cascades, USA. Despite high species-to-species variability in recruitment, community-level patterns monitored for five years supported the lagged response hypothesis, with a mismatch between where seedlings recruit versus adults occur. On average, the seedling recruitment optimum shifted from the adult climatic range centre to historically cooler, wetter regions and many species recruited beyond their cold (e.g. leading) range edge. Meanwhile, successful recruitment occurred at warm and dry edges, despite recent climate change, suggesting that macroclimatic effects on recruitment do not drive trailing range dynamics. We did not detect evidence of microclimatic buffering due to canopy cover in recruitment patterns. Combined, our results suggest apparent range stasis in our system is a lagged response to climate change at the cool ends of species ranges, with range expansions likely to occur slowly or in a punctuated fashion.</p>","PeriodicalId":51026,"journal":{"name":"Ecography","volume":"2026 8","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2026-08-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ecog.07331","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142975476","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Variable species establishment in response to microhabitat indicates different likelihoods of climate-driven range shifts","authors":"Nathalie Isabelle Chardon,&nbsp;Lauren McBurnie,&nbsp;Katie J. A. Goodwin,&nbsp;Kavya Pradhan,&nbsp;Janneke Hille Ris Lambers,&nbsp;Amy L. Angert","doi":"10.1111/ecog.07144","DOIUrl":"10.1111/ecog.07144","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Climate change is causing geographic range shifts globally, and understanding the factors that influence species' range expansions is crucial for predicting future biodiversity changes. A common, yet untested, assumption in forecasting approaches is that species will shift beyond current range edges into new habitats as they become macroclimatically suitable, even though microhabitat variability could have overriding effects on local population dynamics. We aim to better understand the role of microhabitat in range shifts in plants through its impacts on establishment by 1) examining microhabitat variability along large macroclimatic (i.e. elevational) gradients, 2) testing which of these microhabitat variables explain plant recruitment and seedling survival, and 3) predicting microhabitat suitability beyond species range limits. We transplanted seeds of 25 common tree, shrub, forb and graminoid species across and beyond their current elevational ranges in the Washington Cascade Range, USA, along a large elevational gradient spanning a broad range of macroclimates. Over five years, we recorded recruitment, survival, and microhabitat (i.e. high resolution soil, air and light) characteristics rarely measured in biogeographic studies. We asked whether microhabitat variables correlate with elevation, which variables drive species establishment, and whether microhabitat variables important for establishment are already suitable beyond leading range limits. We found that only 30% of microhabitat parameters covaried with elevation. We further observed extremely low recruitment and moderate seedling survival, and these were generally only weakly explained by microhabitat. Moreover, species and life stages responded in contrasting ways to soil biota, soil moisture, temperature, and snow duration. Microhabitat suitability predictions suggest that distribution shifts are likely to be species-specific, as different species have different suitability and availability of microhabitat beyond their present ranges, thus calling into question low-resolution macroclimatic projections that will miss such complexities. We encourage further research on species responses to microhabitat and including microhabitat in range shift forecasts.</p>","PeriodicalId":51026,"journal":{"name":"Ecography","volume":"2026 8","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2026-08-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ecog.07144","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141435953","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Limitations to fungal diversity in forest soil during secondary succession","authors":"James M. Doonan","doi":"10.1111/ecog.07473","DOIUrl":"10.1111/ecog.07473","url":null,"abstract":"<p><b>The Bass Becking and Beijerinck theory of the microbial world that ‘everything is everywhere but the environment selects' has provided a basis to test microbial ecological theory for almost a century (Baas Becking 1934). Applying theory to the apparent chaos of the microbial world is arduous, and applying rules that guide our understanding is difficult. The Bass Becking and Beijerinck theory attempts to explain microbial community structure, i.e. why are certain microbes in a given environment? And why is a particular environment populated by certain microbes? Since the theory was advanced, limitations have been found. In particular, the advent of next-generation sequencing in the 2000s has amplified our ability to categorize and quantify the microbial world (Tringe and Rubin 2005). Despite evident limitations demonstrating that the Bass Becking and Beijerinck theory is an oversimplification, it is perhaps the most unifying theory within microbial ecology (De Wit and Bouvier 2006).</b></p>","PeriodicalId":51026,"journal":{"name":"Ecography","volume":"2026 8","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2026-08-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ecog.07473","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141877743","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Living on the edge – physiological tolerance to frost and drought explains range limits of 35 European tree species","authors":"Anne Baranger,&nbsp;Thomas Cordonnier,&nbsp;Guillaume Charrier,&nbsp;Sylvain Delzon,&nbsp;Maximilian Larter,&nbsp;Nicolas K. Martin-StPaul,&nbsp;Georges Kunstler","doi":"10.1111/ecog.07528","DOIUrl":"10.1111/ecog.07528","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Species distribution models are key to evaluate how climate change threatens European forests and tree species distributions. However, current models struggle to integrate ecophysiological processes. Mechanistic models are complex and have high parameter requirements. Some correlative species distribution models have tried to include traits but so far have struggled to directly connect to ecophysiological processes. Here, we propose a new strategy in which species distributions are based on safety margins which represent species' proximity to their physiological thresholds. We derived frost and drought safety margins for 38 European tree species as the difference between physiological tolerance traits and local maximum stress. We used <i>LT</i>₅₀ and Ψ₅₀ as tolerance traits for frost and drought, respectively, and local minimum temperature and minimum soil water potential as maximum stress. We integrated these safety margins into a species distribution model, which tests if the probability of species presence declines rapidly when the safety margin reaches zero, when physiological stress exceeds the species' tolerance traits. Our results showed thaet 35 of the 38 studied species had their distribution explained by one or both safety margins. We demonstrated that safety-margins-based model can be efficiently transferred to species for which occurrence data are not available. The probability of presence dropped dramatically when the frost safety margin reached zero, whereas it was less sensitive to the drought safety margin. This differential sensitivity may be due to the more complex regulation of drought stress, especially as water is a shared resource, whereas frost is not. Our analysis provides a new approach to link species distributions to their physiological limits and shows that, in Europe, frost and drought safety margins are important determinants of species distributions.</p>","PeriodicalId":51026,"journal":{"name":"Ecography","volume":"2026 8","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2026-08-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ecog.07528","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142760668","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"What controls forest litter decomposition? A coordinated distributed teabag experiment across ten mountains","authors":"Shiyu Ma,&nbsp;Shengbin Chen,&nbsp;Yi Ding,&nbsp;Zhongsheng He,&nbsp;Gang Hu,&nbsp;Jie Liu,&nbsp;Ya-huang Luo,&nbsp;Kun Song,&nbsp;Yongchuan Yang,&nbsp;Xiaolei Huang,&nbsp;Meixiang Gao,&nbsp;Lan Liu,&nbsp;Bo Chen,&nbsp;Xianjin He,&nbsp;Xiaorong Lu,&nbsp;Bingwei Lv,&nbsp;Liang-Liang Ma,&nbsp;Yani Meng,&nbsp;Zhongping Tian,&nbsp;Hong-wei Zhang,&nbsp;Xijin Zhang,&nbsp;Yansong Zhang,&nbsp;Zhaochen Zhang,&nbsp;Shaopeng Li,&nbsp;Jian Zhang","doi":"10.1111/ecog.07339","DOIUrl":"10.1111/ecog.07339","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Litter decomposition in mountainous forest ecosystems is an essential process that affects carbon and nutrient cycling. However, the contribution of litter decomposition to terrestrial ecosystems is difficult to estimate accurately because of the limited comparability of different studies and limited data on local microclimatic and non-climatic factors. Here, we designed a coordinated experiment within subtropical and tropical forests across ten mountains to evaluate variation in litter decomposition rates and stabilization. We tested whether elevations, soil microclimate, soil physiochemistry, tree species diversity, and microhabitat affect decomposition rates and stabilization by using the Tea bag index as a standardized protocol. We found that the associations of decomposition rates and stabilization with elevation and each environmental factor varied between mountains. Elevation significantly affected decomposition rates and stabilization in the western mountains, where soil microclimate also played a dominant role due to relatively cold environments. Across all mountains, decomposition rates decreased while stabilization increased with increasing elevation. In terms of microclimate, decomposition rates increased with increasing soil temperature and temperature variation during the growing season, whereas stabilization decreased with increasing soil temperature and moisture variation. In terms of non-climatic factors, decomposition rates increased with increasing tree species diversity, whereas stabilization decreased with soil pH and slope. Our findings enhance the general understanding of how different factors control forest litter decomposition, highlighting the dominant role of soil microclimate in controlling carbon and nutrient cycling in cold environments and high elevations.</p>","PeriodicalId":51026,"journal":{"name":"Ecography","volume":"2026 8","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2026-08-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ecog.07339","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142142594","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Consumer diversity drives stronger predation in tropical marine communities","authors":"Michele F. Repetto,&nbsp;Gregory M. Ruiz,&nbsp;Mark E. Torchin,&nbsp;Mariana Bonfim,&nbsp;Amy L. Freestone","doi":"10.1002/ecog.07576","DOIUrl":"10.1002/ecog.07576","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Biotic interactions are predicted to be stronger in the tropics compared to higher latitudes, contributing to observed patterns of global biodiversity. While increased consumer diversity and more complex food webs are expected in tropical communities, the trophic dynamics underlying strong regional effects of predation are not well understood. To identify drivers of variation in consumer effects, we first experimentally tested how predators impact prey community structure across latitude. We then explored the community-level characteristics of interacting predators that explain observed changes in prey community structure at low latitudes. Using a standardized experiment paired with underwater videography in four coastal regions spanning 47° of latitude in the eastern Pacific Ocean, we quantified species-specific feeding rates on sessile marine invertebrate communities and tested whether predation pressure led to changes in prey community structure. We applied a multivariate model-based framework to identify elements of the predator community that best explain compositional change in prey communities in the tropics. We found that mid- and high-latitude prey communities experienced low predation pressure, with no discernable effect of predators on community structure, whereas low-latitude communities experienced strong predation pressure by a diverse assemblage of predators resulting in significant changes in community structure. While tropical predator communities were consistently more diverse than those at higher latitudes, our results show that predator–prey interactions can be context-dependent. Predator diversity was the best predictor of prey compositional change in early assembly prey communities. At later stages of prey assembly, however, a lower diversity of predators was observed, and the presence of key predator taxa became the best predictor of prey change. Our findings suggest that both the standing diversity of predator communities and the identity of predators sampled from a diverse species pool are important drivers of strong regional interaction effects.</p>","PeriodicalId":51026,"journal":{"name":"Ecography","volume":"2026 8","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2026-08-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecog.07576","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147708864","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Thinking big: the case for experimental macroecology","authors":"Miguel G. Matias,&nbsp;Jake M. Alexander,&nbsp;Amy L. Freestone,&nbsp;Miguel B. Araújo,&nbsp;Vigdis Vandvik","doi":"10.1002/ecog.09026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/ecog.09026","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;p&gt;Ecology has long faced a productive but unresolved tension between the scales at which patterns are observed and the scales at which mechanisms are understood. The distribution of life across the planet is reorganizing rapidly under interacting pressures (climate change, habitat loss, resource overexploitation, biological invasions, and pollution) that individual studies are rarely designed to meaningfully attribute, address, or disentangle. The availability of species distribution, environmental, phylogenetic, and functional trait data has expanded dramatically over recent decades (Heberling et al. &lt;span&gt;2021&lt;/span&gt;), yielding increasingly detailed descriptions of how species richness, abundance, and range limits shift across space and time. Yet predictive capacity remains limited, particularly under novel levels and combinations of drivers (Urban et al. &lt;span&gt;2016&lt;/span&gt;). The bottleneck is no longer restricted to data availability, but also to a more articulate understanding of causation pathways, i.e. the capacity to attribute large-scale patterns to specific processes in ways that generalize reliably across ecological contexts.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The gap between pattern and mechanism reflects a deeper structural feature of ecological inference: observational data, however extensive, cannot readily distinguish among multiple processes that can generate the same large-scale pattern (Lawton &lt;span&gt;1999&lt;/span&gt;). For example, the latitudinal diversity gradient can be produced by variation in energy availability, evolutionary time, climatic stability, biotic interaction intensity, or some combination thereof. Range limits may reflect physiological tolerance, competitive exclusion, dispersal limitation, enemy release, or demographic lag, and frequently several of these simultaneously. Without experimental intervention, it is difficult to assign causal priority among alternatives. The problem is compounded under global change, which typically involves shifts in multiple interacting drivers simultaneously: predictions based on single-factor correlations are likely to fail under conditions with no historical analogue (Urban et al. &lt;span&gt;2016&lt;/span&gt;). Closing this gap requires not simply more data, but differently designed data: observations embedded in experimental or quasi-experimental designs that test causal hypotheses at the scales where ecological patterns emerge and where the consequences of global environmental changes for biodiversity and ecosystems are realized.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Macroecology is often introduced as the ‘ecology of large scales', but this definition can be misleading. Lawton (&lt;span&gt;1999&lt;/span&gt;) defined macroecology as ‘the search for major, statistical patterns in the types, distributions, abundances, and richness of species, from local to global scales, and the development and testing of underlying theoretical explanations for these patterns.' Likewise, Brown (&lt;span&gt;1999&lt;/span&gt;) argued that what makes a study macroecological is not its absolute geo","PeriodicalId":51026,"journal":{"name":"Ecography","volume":"2026 8","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2026-08-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecog.09026","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148667229","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Thinking big: the case for experimental macroecology","authors":"Miguel G. Matias,&nbsp;Jake M. Alexander,&nbsp;Amy L. Freestone,&nbsp;Miguel B. Araújo,&nbsp;Vigdis Vandvik","doi":"10.1002/ecog.09026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/ecog.09026","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;p&gt;Ecology has long faced a productive but unresolved tension between the scales at which patterns are observed and the scales at which mechanisms are understood. The distribution of life across the planet is reorganizing rapidly under interacting pressures (climate change, habitat loss, resource overexploitation, biological invasions, and pollution) that individual studies are rarely designed to meaningfully attribute, address, or disentangle. The availability of species distribution, environmental, phylogenetic, and functional trait data has expanded dramatically over recent decades (Heberling et al. &lt;span&gt;2021&lt;/span&gt;), yielding increasingly detailed descriptions of how species richness, abundance, and range limits shift across space and time. Yet predictive capacity remains limited, particularly under novel levels and combinations of drivers (Urban et al. &lt;span&gt;2016&lt;/span&gt;). The bottleneck is no longer restricted to data availability, but also to a more articulate understanding of causation pathways, i.e. the capacity to attribute large-scale patterns to specific processes in ways that generalize reliably across ecological contexts.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The gap between pattern and mechanism reflects a deeper structural feature of ecological inference: observational data, however extensive, cannot readily distinguish among multiple processes that can generate the same large-scale pattern (Lawton &lt;span&gt;1999&lt;/span&gt;). For example, the latitudinal diversity gradient can be produced by variation in energy availability, evolutionary time, climatic stability, biotic interaction intensity, or some combination thereof. Range limits may reflect physiological tolerance, competitive exclusion, dispersal limitation, enemy release, or demographic lag, and frequently several of these simultaneously. Without experimental intervention, it is difficult to assign causal priority among alternatives. The problem is compounded under global change, which typically involves shifts in multiple interacting drivers simultaneously: predictions based on single-factor correlations are likely to fail under conditions with no historical analogue (Urban et al. &lt;span&gt;2016&lt;/span&gt;). Closing this gap requires not simply more data, but differently designed data: observations embedded in experimental or quasi-experimental designs that test causal hypotheses at the scales where ecological patterns emerge and where the consequences of global environmental changes for biodiversity and ecosystems are realized.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Macroecology is often introduced as the ‘ecology of large scales', but this definition can be misleading. Lawton (&lt;span&gt;1999&lt;/span&gt;) defined macroecology as ‘the search for major, statistical patterns in the types, distributions, abundances, and richness of species, from local to global scales, and the development and testing of underlying theoretical explanations for these patterns.' Likewise, Brown (&lt;span&gt;1999&lt;/span&gt;) argued that what makes a study macroecological is not its absolute geo","PeriodicalId":51026,"journal":{"name":"Ecography","volume":"2026 8","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2026-08-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecog.09026","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148667432","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}