Jacopo Grilli - Università di Padova #
Spatial distribution of species across scales as an emerging pattern #
There has been a considerable effort to understand and quantify the 
spatial distribution of species across different ecosystems. The Species 
Area Relationship (SAR), which relates the area with the number of species 
that it supports, is probably one of the most studied quantity in ecology. 
We introduce a simple phenomenological model based on Poisson cluster 
processes which allows us to derive an analytical expression for the SAR 
which reproduces the empirical behavior as sample area increases from 
local to continental scales, explaining how it can be understood in terms 
of simple geometric arguments. Within our framework we also obtain 
interesting prediction for other spatial ecological quantities.