Do rules govern ecology, or are we simply natural historians gathering special cases? Jon Chase's research interests are broad but generally focus on the rules (or lack thereof) underlying the diversity, distribution, and abundance of animal and plant species from the population/community/ecosystem perspective. He is particularly interested in the patterns and processes that develop at the interface between local and regional spatial scales. To approach these questions, he combines mathematical theory, observations and statistical approaches, rigorous experimentation in both the field and lab, and a knowledge of natural history.

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• Selected Publications

The scale-dependence of the productivity-diversity relationship for wetland plants and animals. Local scale data (a) are species richness from within a wetland, regional scale data (b) incorporate multiple wetlands within a watershed. Species dissimilarity (c) is the variation in species composition among wetlands within regions.