Abstract
Spatial ecological patterns reflect the underlying processes that shape the structure of species and communities. Mechanisms like intra- and inter-specific competition, dispersal and host-pathogen interactions can act over a wide range of scales. Yet, the inference of such processes from patterns is a challenging task. Here we call attention to a quite unexpected phenomenon in the extensively studied tropical forest at the Barro-Colorado Island (BCI): the spatial deployment of (almost) all tree species is statistically equivalent, once distances are normalized by ℓ 0, the typical distance between neighboring conspecific trees. Correlation function, cluster statistics and nearest-neighbor distance distribution become species-independent after this rescaling. Global observables (species frequencies) and local spatial structure appear to be interrelated. This "glocality" suggests a radical interpretation of recent experiments that show a correlation between species' abundance and the negative feedback among conspecifics. For the forest to be glocal, the negative feedback must govern spatial patterns over all scales.
Highlights
An understanding of the forces that govern the dynamics of populations and communities is one of the major challenges of contemporary ecology [1]
Numerous analyses of aggregation, patchiness and structure have appeared during the last decade, most of which have been utilizing the data from the spatially explicit, long-term monitoring of a few tropical forests provided by the Center for Tropical Forest Science (CTFS)
To emphasize the novelty of this collapse, we show in S1 File, section 2, the corresponding figures for four mechanistic models that were used in the literature to account for the spatial deployment of forests: A Poisson process, spatial neutral dynamics with mixed local-global recruitment kernel (MLGK), which is similar to the Cox process, spatial neutral dynamics with a Cauchy kernel and the fractal structure suggested in [33]
Summary
An understanding of the forces that govern the dynamics of populations and communities is one of the major challenges of contemporary ecology [1]. Numerous analyses of aggregation, patchiness and structure have appeared during the last decade, most of which have been utilizing the data from the spatially explicit, long-term monitoring of a few tropical forests provided by the Center for Tropical Forest Science (CTFS). All these works implemented various techniques of point
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
