Biodiversity patterns and the mechanisms driving these patterns are inherently scale dependent. Examination of scale dependence concurrently in space and time has the potential to resolve inconsistencies in biodiversity patterns, identify the scales relevant to different ecological processes, and identify the environmental drivers of biodiversity that would be missed with a singular spatial or temporal approach. By exploring scaling patterns concurrently in space and time we hope to identify the scales relevant to different ecological processes.
Project 1: Scaling of temporal change in bird assemblages across contiguous USA
The project explores the scale dependence of five decades of temporal change in taxonomic- and trait-based characteristics of bird assemblages. We find that biodiversity gains or apparent stasis at one scale may be fully reconcilable with losses at others and that functional implications of biodiversity change also vary by scale. These findings will require that ecologists explicitly consider scale dependence of ecological processes driving biodiversity assembly and disassembly.
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Collaborators: Walter Jetz (Yale).
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Publications: Jarzyna & Jetz 2018, Nature Communications.