Diversity begets stability: Sublinear growth and competitive coexistence across ecosystems.

The worldwide loss of species diversity brings urgency to understanding how diverse ecosystems maintain stability. Whereas early ecological ideas and classic observations suggested that stability increases with diversity, ecological theory makes the opposite prediction, leading to the long-standing "diversity-stability debate." Here, we show that this puzzle can be resolved if growth scales as a sublinear power law with biomass (exponent <1), exhibiting a form of population self-regulation analogous to models of individual ontogeny.

The human cell count and size distribution.

Cell size and cell count are adaptively regulated and intimately linked to growth and function. Yet, despite their widespread relevance, the relation between cell size and count has never been formally examined over the whole human body. Here, we compile a comprehensive dataset of cell size and count over all major cell types, with data drawn from >1,500 published sources.

The global human day.

The daily activities of ≈8 billion people occupy exactly 24 h per day, placing a strict physical limit on what changes can be achieved in the world. These activities form the basis of human behavior, and because of the global integration of societies and economies, many of these activities interact across national borders. Yet, there is no comprehensive overview of how the finite resource of time is allocated at the global scale.

Consistent predator-prey biomass scaling in complex food webs.

The ratio of predator-to-prey biomass is a key element of trophic structure that is typically investigated from a food chain perspective, ignoring channels of energy transfer (e.g. omnivory) that may govern community structure.

The global ocean size spectrum from bacteria to whales.

It has long been hypothesized that aquatic biomass is evenly distributed among logarithmic body mass size classes. Although this community structure has been observed regionally, mostly among plankton groups, its generality has never been formally tested across all marine life over the global ocean, nor have the impacts of humans on it been globally assessed. Here, we bring together data at the global scale to test the hypothesis from bacteria to whales.

Linking scaling laws across eukaryotes.

Scaling laws relating body mass to species characteristics are among the most universal quantitative patterns in biology. Within major taxonomic groups, the 4 key ecological variables of metabolism, abundance, growth, and mortality are often well described by power laws with exponents near 3/4 or related to that value, a commonality often attributed to biophysical constraints on metabolism. However, metabolic scaling theories remain widely debated, and the links among the 4 variables have never been formally tested across the full domain of eukaryote life, to which prevailing theory applies.

Climate change impacts on marine ecosystems through the lens of the size spectrum.

Climate change is a complex global issue that is driving countless shifts in the structure and function of marine ecosystems. To better understand these shifts, many processes need to be considered, yet they are often approached from incompatible perspectives. This article reviews one relatively simple, integrated perspective: the abundance-size spectrum.

Linking structure and function in food webs: maximization of different ecological functions generates distinct food web structures.

Trophic interactions are central to ecosystem functioning, but the link between food web structure and ecosystem functioning remains obscure. Regularities (i.e.

The predator-prey power law: Biomass scaling across terrestrial and aquatic biomes.

Ecosystems exhibit surprising regularities in structure and function across terrestrial and aquatic biomes worldwide. We assembled a global data set for 2260 communities of large mammals, invertebrates, plants, and plankton. We find that predator and prey biomass follow a general scaling law with exponents consistently near ¾.

Implementation of the Adelaide Hills Palliative Care project.

The Rural Palliative Care Program (RPCP) is currently being implemented in eight pilot sites across Australia, under the banner of the National Palliative Care Program. It is one of a number of initiatives commissioned by the Department of Health and Ageing that are designed to achieve the goals of the National Palliative Care Strategy. Specifically the RPCP is testing service components that aim to improve access to palliative care for people living in rural and remote communities.

The Griffith area palliative care service: a pilot project.

In September 2000 the Commonwealth released, as part of its National Palliative Care Strategy under the Australian Health Care Agreements, a National Framework for Palliative Care Service Development. The new National Framework stressed an important set of values to guide models of palliative care delivery. It notes that the challenge is to secure the place of palliative care as an integral part of health care across Australia, routinely available within local communities to those people who need it.