BIOCOMPLEXITY: Scaling of Biodiversity: Physical and Biological Foundations of Ecological Principles

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0083422Brown Underlying the diversity of life and the complexity of ecology is order that reflects the operation of fundamental physical and biological processes. Scaling relationships are emergent quantitative features of biodiversity. Some of them appear to be universal, occurring in virtually all taxa of organisms and kinds of environments. They are patterns of structure or dynamics that are self-similar or fractal-like over many orders of magnitude. They can be described mathematically by power functions. They allow extrapolation and prediction over a wide range of scales., They offer clues to underlying mechanisms that powerfully constrain biodiversity. This research will use the interplay of mathematical models and empirical measurements to elucidate the physical and biological principles that determine how the life history, abundance, distribution, and species richness of organisms scale with body size, space, and time. The program of research and education activities involves: (1) collaborations among physicists, mathematicians, geologists/hydrologists, biologists and ecologists, (2) interactions among scientists from seven institutions, (3) cooperation between the University of New Mexico, the Santa Fe Institute, and Los Alamos National Laboratory, and (4) interdisciplinary training for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows.