Macrosystems biology research has expanded and evolved over the past decade as the scientific community grapples with ecological issues at regional to continental scales relevant to human interactions within the biosphere. Macrosystems biology builds on established fields of study like population and community ecology, biogeography, and global biogeochemistry, and has the potential to develop into a unique and important subdiscipline. If we achieve this outcome, macrosystems research will likely have increasing relevance to ecological science and its practical application, and could potentially transform large‐scale ecological understanding. Both previous studies and the articles included in this Special Issue document the development of a broad spectrum of macrosystems approaches, how ecological researchers have accommodated the sociological aspects of collaboration among diverse individuals and groups, and how new methods are being applied to deal with the large and diverse types of data used by macrosystems biologists.

中文翻译：

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重新审视宏观系统：生态学新学科中的挑战与成功

在过去的十年中，随着科学界努力解决与生物圈内人类互动有关的区域到大陆规模的生态问题，宏观系统生物学研究得到了扩展和发展。宏观系统生物学建立在人口与社区生态学，生物地理学和全球生物地球化学等已建立的研究领域之上，并有可能发展成为独特而重要的子学科。如果我们取得了这一成果，宏观系统研究将可能与生态科学及其实际应用越来越相关，并有可能改变大规模的生态学认识。先前的研究和本期特刊中的文章均记录了各种宏观系统方法的发展，