Beaugrand Grégory
CNRS, Univ. Littoral Côte d'Opale, Univ. Lille, UMR 8187 LOG, F-62930 Wimereux, France.
Biology (Basel). 2023 Feb 21;12(3):339. doi: 10.3390/biology12030339.
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.
本综述介绍了一种名为“生命排列的宏观生态理论”（METAL）的最新理论。该理论基于生态位的概念，表明生态位与环境（包括气候）的相互作用是解释从个体到群落水平在自然界中观察到的许多现象（例如物候、生物地理变化以及群落的排列和重组，无论是渐进的还是突然的）的基础。该理论在气候变化生物学以及个体和物种生态学中的应用已在其他地方有所阐述。在本综述中，我将展示METAL如何解释为何低纬度地区的物种比高纬度地区更多，为何生物多样性的峰值在海洋领域位于中纬度地区，而在陆地领域位于赤道地区，以及最后为何陆地物种比海洋物种更多，尽管生物多样性最初出现在海洋中。我假定全球生物多样性的排列在数学上受到限制，我们之前将这种限制称为“生命的大棋盘”，它决定了可能在给定区域或领域定殖的物种的最大数量。该理论还使得重建过去的生物多样性以及理解在人为气候变化背景下生物多样性如何重新组织成为可能。
