Macroecology proceeds by identifying patterns and then identifying processes that cause
those patterns. Most of the processes that macroecologists study are local in nature and tend
to involve species interactions and speciation and extinction processes. In contrast, we
propose that several important macroecological patterns can be explained by very large-
scale processes that are primarily spatial in nature. Specifically, we suggest that the
structure of abundance across a species' entire range combined with interspecific patterns in …