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🌍 What structures life on Earth? In the 1980s, Brown and Maurer laid the foundations of macroecology with a simple, powerful idea: space, time… and FOOD. Where food is, how it's distributed, and who gets access to it.

Since then, macroecology has mapped thousands of global patterns: 🌿 species richness 🐋 body size 🌡️ climate tolerance But one question has remained surprisingly underexplored: How do mammals divide up the global buffet?

In our new paper, we asked: Who eats what — and where — across the world’s biomes? How does being a specialist or a generalist affect that? And what that means for biodiversity? 🔍🦓🌍 👉 doi.org/10.1002/ecog.0…

We looked at ~3,600 terrestrial mammals 🐒🦫🦒. And we didn’t classify them by what they eat. We first asked: how many biomes does each species live in?

Because eating fruit in a rainforest🌿🌺 is not the same as eating fruit in a desert 🌵, especially when your environment only offers food part of the year 🥝🍇.

So we grouped mammals based on biome specialization: 🔴 Specialists – live in only one biome 🟡 Moderate generalists – live in 2–4 biomes 🔵 Extreme generalists – 5 or more This isn’t about dietary generalism. A species can have a narrow diet and still thrive in many environments

A biome specialist must find everything it needs in one type of ecosystem. Rain or drought. Summer or winter☀️🌩️❄️. If resources run out, there’s nowhere else to go. Generalists, by contrast, can follow the seasons or shift habitats. More options, more resilience. 🌍

We built a multivariate map of diet space—what we call the “trophic niche”—for all these species. Then we projected it across ten global biomes: from lush tropical forests to frozen tundra. How full is the dietary space in each biome? And who’s filling it?

The answer: generalists dominate. Especially moderate generalists. They take up most of the trophic space in every biome, even in extreme environments like tundra or taiga. ❄️ They're the flexible backbone of global mammal communities.

Specialists? They often occupy dietary roles already covered by generalists. Yes, a few have truly unique diets—ecological “weirdos” with no substitutes. But most specialists are nested within generalist space. Their diets are rarer, but not necessarily novel.

In productive biomes like rainforests, there’s space for everyone. Specialists and generalists alike, all coexisting in dense, redundant networks. But in harsher biomes, the story changes. Specialists shrink. Generalists step in. And trophic diversity becomes fragile.

🧩 Functional redundancy matters. If many species do similar things, ecosystems are buffered. If one is lost, another can take its place. That redundancy is a kind of ecological insurance. 🛟🛠️

Our results show that many specialists are vulnerable, but also somewhat replaceable. Meanwhile, moderate generalists are the real keystones. They fill the space, link ecosystems, and stabilize food webs. They’re not flashy, but they hold the fort.

Rothier, P.S., Herrel, A., Benson, R.B.J. et al. Body mass evolution as a driver of morphological and ecological diversity in terrestrial mammals. BMC Ecol Evo 25, 69 (2025). doi.org/10.1186/s12862…

How dinosaur extinction gave us fleshy fruits youtu.be/71umdejIWRI?si… via Eons

Altiero Spinelli: Reimaginando Europa desde el presidio youtu.be/ZHsJKcKrnHM?si…

Secanos Vivos: donde la biodiversidad y la alimentación se encuentran youtu.be/UoxyiIkEOx4?si… a través de SEO/BirdLife

Observan por primera vez el momento cero del nacimiento de un sistema solar youtu.be/161hAgwCT5M?si…

Nueva publicación “Neanderthal mobility over very long distances: The case of El Castillo cave (northern Spain) and the ‘Vasconian’ Mousterian”. Parte del sílex usado es de muy lejana procedencia, concretamente de Tercis (Francia) a 420 km Descárgalo sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

Hydration-dehydration effects on germination tolerance to water stress of eight Cistus species mdpi.com/3410886 via Plants MDPI