Department of Biology, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL 32816-2368, USA.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2011 Aug 27;366(1576):2331-5. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2011.0064.
Both biogeography and ecology seek to understand the processes that determine patterns in nature, but do so at different spatial and temporal scales. The two disciplines were not always so different, and are recently converging again at regional spatial scales and broad temporal scales. In order to avoid confusion and to hasten progress at the converging margins of each discipline, the following papers were presented at a symposium in the International Biogeography Society's 2011 meeting, and are now published in this issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. In a novel approach, groups of authors were paired to represent biogeographic and ecological perspectives on each of four topics: niche, comparative ecology and macroecology, community assembly, and diversity. Collectively, this compilation identifies points of agreement and disagreement between the two views on these central topics, and points to future research directions that may build on agreements and reconcile differences. We conclude this compilation with an overview on the integration of biogeography and ecology.
生物地理学和生态学都试图了解决定自然界模式的过程，但它们的研究尺度不同。这两个学科并不总是如此不同，最近在区域空间尺度和广泛的时间尺度上再次趋同。为了避免混淆，并在每个学科的趋同边缘加速进展，这些论文在国际生物地理学学会 2011 年会议的一次专题讨论会上进行了介绍，并在本期《英国皇家学会哲学汇刊 B》上发表。采用一种新颖的方法，将作者分组，以代表对四个主题的生物地理和生态观点：生态位、比较生态学和宏观生态学、群落组装和多样性。总的来说，本汇编确定了这两个观点在这些核心主题上的一致和分歧之处，并指出了未来可能基于共识和协调差异的研究方向。我们以生物地理学和生态学的综合概述结束本汇编。
