Nature is economical ...

The researchers were surprised to find that the pattern of species distribution was the same,
regardless of the life form. (CREDIT: Wirestock / Freepik)

Nature is economical as energy and entropy, the two entities that drive reality, manifest themselves in consistent fashion. From Fibonacci spirals to strange attractors in chaos, the ways nature distributes energy is limited, something readily seen in how life survives on planet earth.

Seen below is an elegant example of how energy is distributed in an open system via chaos.

An animation of a double-rod pendulum at an intermediate energy showing chaotic behavior.
Starting the pendulum from a slightly different initial condition would result in a vastly different trajectory.
The double-rod pendulum is one of the simplest dynamical systems with chaotic solutions.

Four Key Measures of Biodiversity

To reveal this pattern, the team looked at four essential aspects of biodiversity:

Species richness – How many species live in an area.

Range size – How widely each species is spread within the region.

Endemicity – Whether species are found only in that area or also elsewhere.

Biota overlap – How many species come from neighboring regions.

 What could be driving this universal pattern? The team points to a mechanism long proposed in ecology but rarely confirmed at a global scale: environmental filtering. This is the idea that only species suited to local conditions—such as temperature, rainfall, or soil type—can thrive in a given area.

The researchers found evidence for two kinds of environmental filters shaping these patterns. One filter works within regional hotspots, where conditions are just right for a high number of unique species to thrive. The second operates at the edges of regions, where conditions are more variable and only certain species from neighboring regions can survive.

The researchers found evidence for two kinds of environmental filters shaping these patterns. One filter works within regional hotspots, where conditions are just right for a high number of unique species to thrive. The second operates at the edges of regions, where conditions are more variable and only certain species from neighboring regions can survive.

These two filters, working together, help determine which species make it into the core, which ones reach the edges, and which ones never cross into a new area at all.

Species sorting within biogeographical regions largely explains local variations in species richness across the planet. (CREDIT: Nature Ecology & Evolution)

The Golden Mean

Sunflower

Helianthus annuus cv. Sunfola

Leonardo Pisano, "Fibonacci"