Biologists have long been fascinated by the exceptionally high diversity displayed by some
evolutionary groups. Adaptive radiation in such clades is not only spectacular, but is also an …

Community ecology and ecosystem ecology provide two perspectives on complex
ecological systems that have largely complementary strengths and weaknesses. Merging …

The major subdisciplines of ecology--population ecology, community ecology, ecosystem
ecology, and evolutionary ecology--have diverged increasingly in recent decades. What is …

Humans are inextricably linked to each other and our natural world, and microorganisms lie
at the nexus of those interactions. Microorganisms form genetically flexible, taxonomically …

Theories of how species evolve in changing environments mostly consider single species in
isolation or pairs of interacting species. Yet all organisms live in diverse communities …

In this review, we discuss modularity and hierarchy in biological systems. We review
examples from protein structure, genetics, and biological networks of modular partitioning of …

Despite growing interplay between ecological and evolutionary studies, the question of how
biodiversity influences evolutionary dynamics within species remains understudied. Here …

Complex systems science has contributed to our understanding of ecology in important
areas such as food webs, patch dynamics and population fluctuations. This has been …

Soils and their biota have been studied by a variety of observational and experimental
methods that have allowed biologists to infer their structural and functional interactions …

Mutualistic networks have been shown to involve complex patterns of interactions among
animal and plant species, including a widespread presence of nestedness. The nested …