The glocal forest

TL;DR

This paper reveals a surprising 'glocal' phenomenon in tropical forests where spatial patterns of tree species become statistically identical after normalization, linking local interactions to global species distributions.

Contribution

It uncovers the 'glocal' property in tropical forest spatial patterns, suggesting negative feedback influences structure across all scales, a novel insight into ecological spatial organization.

Findings

Species spatial deployment becomes statistically equivalent after normalization.

Global species frequencies are linked to local spatial structures.

Negative feedback mechanisms govern patterns across all scales.

Abstract

Ecological spatial patterns reflect the underlying processes that shape the structure of species and communities. Mechanisms like inter and intra species competition, dispersal and host-pathogen interactions are believed to act over a wide range of scales, and the inference of the process from the pattern is, despite its popularity, 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 , 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.