4

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

manipulate such changes in a directed way is an important goal for the future (see e.g. Janzen 1998, 1999). Two consequences of the `macroecological' research agenda have strong impacts an its methodologies and interpretations: 1) Large-scaled investigation can usually not be experimental because of the ecosystem-wide extent of most investigated patterns. In some cases it might be possible to use smaller-scaled model systems that can be manipulated (e.g. Holt et al. 2004, Warren & Gaston 1997, Lawton 1998, 2000), but ultimately effects have to be documented an 'life-size' systems to be credible. As a consequence, deductive methods have to be applied, whereby the common patterns in nature as well as exceptions to them are documented and used for hypothesis generation (including quantitative models), which are then tested an further 'descriptive' data (see also Wilson 2003, Bell 2003, Boero et al. 2004). Descriptive data may contain biases and parameter collinearities, which often make it necessary to apply various data transformations, corrections or multivariate approaches (e.g. Southwood & Henderson 2000, Legendre & Legendre 1998). 2) Macroecological thinking is inherently neutral - individual species identities and their properties are usually not of much concern (Maurer 1999), although explicit ecological neutrality of species (i.e. all specimens, regardless of species identity, have equal fitness) is assumed only in some models (e.g. Bell 2001, 2003, Hubbell 2001, McGill & Collins 2003, Ulrich 2004). Neutrality is an increasingly employed assumption in ecological models that leads to considerable simplifications, yet often retrieves patters which seem to be dose to empirical data (e.g. Hubbell 2001, but see McGill 2003a, b, Purves & Pacala in press). The neutrality assumption remains problematic because it is known that species are not neutral (i.e., species are adapted to certain habitats and niches, Begon et al. 1996) - but the differences between species might have no significant i mpact an the investigated patterns (Hubbell 2001). However, in apparent contradiction to this, good knowledge of the individual species characteristics is an essential prerequisite of all macroecological research, be it for data acquisition (e.g. choice of investigated taxa, successful field work), analysis (e.g. sensible exclusion of particular species) or interpretation (e.g. post hoc hypotheses, outlier Interpretation, etc.). Particularly if data are not sampled in own field work but retrieved from published sources it might be necessary to consult taxonomists and experienced naturalists to consider potential problems in data (which might not be explicitly stated in published data) or to interpret results properly. Furthermore, differences in patterns between various taxa, guilds, life histories or regions (e.g. Hillebrand 2001) might give important clues an the causal mechanisms behind the patterns. Advances in the search for causalities will probably mostly be made by explicit, quantitative models (Maurer 1999), which make precise and multiple predictions that can be validated against empirical data (McGill 2003b). The study presented here contains too many data insufficiencies to explicitly test complex model predictions - there are better data Sets (e.g. the British & North American bird counts) for such purposes. However, it may add valuable data for a detailed and comprehensive documentation of patterns for a taxonomic group and a geographic region that so far has been rarely used for macroecological investigation.