Leroux et al. Read Me

Human activities are altering the fundamental geography of biogeochemicals. Yet we currently lack an understanding of how the spatial patterns in organismal stoichiometry affect biogeochemical processes and the tools to predict the impacts of global changes on biogeochemical processes. In this contribution we develop stoichiometric distribution models (StDMs), which allow us to evaluate and map spatial structure in resource and consumer elemental composition across a landscape. We parameterize StDMs for a consumer-resource (moose-white birch) system and demonstrate that we can develop predictive models of resource stoichiometry across a landscape and that such models could improve our predictions of consumer space use. With results from our study system application, we argue that explicit consideration of the spatial patterns in organismal elemental composition may uncover emergent individual, population, community, and ecosystem properties that are not revealed at the local extents routinely used in ecological stoichiometry. We discuss perspectives for further developments and application of StDMs to advance four emerging frameworks for spatial ecosystem ecology in an era of global change, meta-ecosystem theory, macroecological stoichiometry, remotely sensed biogeochemistry, and individual-based spatial nutritional ecology.