Sir

According to H. J. Fisher in Correspondence (Nature 417, 787; 200210.1038/417787c), macroecology is largely contained within biogeography, which documents and interprets patterns in biodiversity at large temporal and spatial scales. I disagree.

Macroecology aims to identify general principles or natural laws underlying the structure and function of ecological systems, which are apparent in the patterns of distribution and abundance of entities composing these systems, no matter what the scale of the analysis. Macroecology analyses some of the same patterns (for example, latitudinal patterns in species diversity), but its emphasis is not restricted to patterns apparent at large spatial scales, nor to contingent explanations.

Thus, macroecology can be understood as an approach to the study of ecological systems centred ion the search for general and invariant principles underlying their diversity and variability. It is neither biogeography nor a large-scale version of community ecology, but a new overall perspective on ecological complexity.