Bridging Scales: Allometric Random Walks Link Movement and Biodiversity Research

Integrating mechanistic models of movement and behavior into large-scale movement ecology and biodiversity research is one of the major challenges in current ecological science. This is mainly due to a large gap between the spatial scales at which these research lines act. Here, we propose to apply trait-based movement models to bridge this gap and generalize movement trajectories across species and ecosystems. We show how to use species traits (e.g., body mass) to generate allometric random walks and illustrate in two worked examples how this facilitates general predictions of species-interaction traits, metacommunity structures, and biodiversity patterns. Thereby, allometric random walks foster a closer integration of movement ecology and biodiversity research by scaling up from small-scale mechanistic measurements to a predictive understanding of movement and biodiversity patterns in different landscapes.