ecologys big, hot idea生态的大热的想法.pdfVIP

Open access, freely available online Feature Ecology’s Big, Hot Idea “If the theory is right, it’s one John Whitfi eld of the most signifi cant in ife is complicated. It comes in as the size of individuals increases. biology for a long time.” all sorts of shapes, sizes, places, And the number of species in all Land combinations, and has environments declines as you move evolved a dizzying variety of solutions from the equator towards the poles. to the problem of carrying on living. Wouldn’t it be good if there were a Yet look inside a cell and life takes on, simple theory that used life’s shared Citation: Whitfi eld J (2004) Ecology’s big, hot idea. if not simplicity, then at least a certain fundamentals to explain its large- PLoS Biol 2(12): e440. uniformity—a genetic system based scale regularities, via its diversity of Copyright: © 2004 John Whitfi eld. This is an open-ac- around nucleic acids, for example, and individuals? In the past few years, a cess article distributed under the terms of the Cre- a common set of chemical reactions team of ecologists and physicists have ative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in for turning food into fuel. And looked come up with just such a theory