Macroecology for microbiology
Department of Biology, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, United States
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Biodiversity, Biogeography, Bioinformatics, Ecology, Microbiology
- Keywords
- biodiversity, rare biosphere, biogeography, scaling, metabolism, global change
- Copyright
- © 2016 Lennon et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2016. Macroecology for microbiology. PeerJ Preprints 4:e2478v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.2478v1
Abstract
To microbiologists, the term macroecology may conjure iconic images of wildebeests grazing in African savannahs or hummingbirds pollinating flowers in a tropical rain forest. Contrary to what the name implies, macroecology is not the ecological study of macroscopic organisms. Rather, macroecology is the study of ecological relationships through patterns in abundance, distribution, and diversity. In this paper, we highlight some of the pressing questions, challenges, and opportunities for microbial macroecology.
Author Comment
This manuscript has been submitted to a peer reviewed journal.