Week 1. Emergent Properties and the development of 'Macroecology'

An emergent property is something that a collection of genes, individuals, species (etc.) have, but which the individual members do not. Something that is only visible when you squint and look at the forest and not the individual trees within it.

Employing a macroecological approach requires technology (e.g., good computers), data (not readily available until the last decade) and novel statistical approaches. This week I will go over some of these issues and help you start thinking about what type of question you might ask for your research project in the course.

Next week, we will begin reading the papers in the book. As you will note, the first section of the Foundations of Macroecology volume presents a number of papers that did analyses at a broad temporal/spatial scale well before the term 'macroecology' was coined by Jim Brown and Brian Maurer in 1989. While I am only requiring that you read some of these seminal papers (see schedule), you are of course welcome to read all of them in your copious spare time.