Towards an Understanding of Large-Scale Biodiversity Patterns on Land and in the Sea

Author:

Beaugrand Grégory1ORCID

Affiliation:

1. CNRS, Univ. Littoral Côte d’Opale, Univ. Lille, UMR 8187 LOG, F-62930 Wimereux, France

Abstract

This review presents a recent theory named ‘macroecological theory on the arrangement of life’ (METAL). This theory is based on the concept of the ecological niche and shows that the niche-environment (including climate) interaction is fundamental to explain many phenomena observed in nature from the individual to the community level (e.g., phenology, biogeographical shifts, and community arrangement and reorganisation, gradual or abrupt). The application of the theory in climate change biology as well as individual and species ecology has been presented elsewhere. In this review, I show how METAL explains why there are more species at low than high latitudes, why the peak of biodiversity is located at mid-latitudes in the oceanic domain and at the equator in the terrestrial domain, and finally why there are more terrestrial than marine species, despite the fact that biodiversity has emerged in the oceans. I postulate that the arrangement of planetary biodiversity is mathematically constrained, a constraint we previously called ‘the great chessboard of life’, which determines the maximum number of species that may colonise a given region or domain. This theory also makes it possible to reconstruct past biodiversity and understand how biodiversity could be reorganised in the context of anthropogenic climate change.

Funder

CNRS, Université du Littoral Côte d’Opale

Publisher

MDPI AG

Subject

General Agricultural and Biological Sciences,General Immunology and Microbiology,General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology

Reference183 articles.

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