Mechanistic simulation models in macroecology and biogeography: state-of-art and prospects
Abstract
Macroecology and biogeography are concerned with understanding biodiversity patterns across space and time. In the past, the two disciplines have addressed this question mainly with correlative approaches, despite frequent calls for more mechanistic explanations. Recent advances in computational power, theoretical understanding, and statistical tools are, however, currently facilitating the development of more system-oriented, mechanistic models. We review these models, identify different model types and theoretical frameworks, compare their processes and properties, and summarize emergent findings. We show that ecological (physiology, demographics, dispersal, biotic interactions) and evolutionary processes, as well as environmental and human-induced drivers, are increasingly modelled mechanistically, and that new insights into biodiversity dynamics emerge from these models. Yet substantial challenges still lie ahead for this young research field, among which we identify scaling, calibration, validation, and balancing complexity as pressing issues. Future work should aim at developing more flexible and modular models that not only allow different ecological theories to be expressed and contrasted, but which are also built for tight integration with all macroecological data sources.
What the paper shows and why it matters (AI-generated)
Macroecology and biogeography have mostly explained biodiversity patterns correlatively, despite repeated calls for more mechanistic explanations that computational power and theory are only now catching up to enable. This review maps the resulting landscape of mechanistic simulation models, comparing what they actually model — physiology, dispersal, biotic interactions, evolution — and naming scaling, calibration and validation as the field's real remaining obstacles. It gave a young, scattered modelling tradition a shared vocabulary, one still being cited in exactly the model-intercomparison and calibration work it called for.