Chapter 10 - Linking individual performance to population persistence in a changing world

Abstract

A central goal of ecology is to understand what drives the abundance, distribution, and diversity of life, and one process that is shared by all of life on Earth is metabolism. The metabolic theory of ecology (MTE) posits that temperature and body size impose universal constraints on the flux, storage, and turnover of energy, matter, and information. Thus, principles of chemistry, physics, and biology operating on metabolic processes at lower levels of biological organization (i.e., molecules and cells) constrain organismal performance and give rise to predictable patterns at higher levels (i.e., populations, communities, and ecosystems). MTE can be a powerful framework to project future ecological states from a theoretical basis with a broad empirical domain. Future work should incrementally increase the complexity of the test systems, and further investigate the factors that limit or facilitate the evolution of temperature dependence. Answering this question is critical to achieving a coherent picture of what generates and maintains current and future patterns of abundance, distribution, and diversity. In an era of rapid climate change, ecologists must improve our ability to predict changes in the functioning of the ecosystems on which human well-being depends.