Unifying Current Theories of Ecology

提议的合作工作组将汇集一批研究人员，整合过去十年来发展迅速的三个生态学领域：代谢理论、中性生物多样性理论和空间宏观生态学。该工作组的目标将是描绘每个区域的分离和重叠领域，并评估将它们综合成一个统一理论的前景，该理论将生态和进化模式和过程整合在多个尺度和整个生物层次上。这样一个统一的生态学理论将为理解和预测现实世界系统对全球变化的反应奠定基础。

The proposed collaborative working group will bring together a body of researchersto integrate three areas of ecology that have advanced rapidly over the past decade:metabolic theory, neutral biodiversity theory, and spatial macroecology. The goal of thisworking group will be to delineate the separate and overlapping realms of each area and toassess the prospects of synthesizing them into a unified theory that integrates ecological andevolutionary patterns and processes at multiple scales and throughout the biologicalhierarchy. Such a unified theory of ecology would lay the foundation for understanding andpredicting the response of real-world systems to global change.