Land use change through the lens of macroecology: insights from Azorean arthropods and the Maximum Entropy Theory of Ecology

Abstract from Brush et al. (2022) Ecography: Human activity and land management practices, in particular land use change, have resulted in the global loss of biodiversity. These types of disturbance affect the shape of macroecological patterns, and therefore analyzing these patterns can provide insights into how ecosystems are affected by land use change. We here use arthropod census data from 96 sites at Terceira Island in the Azores archipelago across four different land uses of increasing management intensity: native forest, exotic forest, semi-natural pasture, and intensive pasture, to examine the effects of land use type on three macroecological patterns: the species abundance distribution, the metabolic rate distribution of individuals, and the species--area relationship. The Maximum Entropy Theory of Ecology (METE) has successfully predicted these patterns across habitats and taxa in undisturbed ecosystems, and thus provides a null expectation for their shapes. Across these patte...