Nellecologia

Nellecologia is a proposed subdiscipline within ecology that aims to study ecological processes across nested levels of organization and the feedbacks that connect them. It emphasizes how events at fine scales, such as genetic variation or individual behavior, propagate to influence larger-scale patterns like populations, communities, ecosystems, and landscapes, while larger contexts feed back to affect processes at smaller levels. The term reflects a focus on intra- and inter-scale dynamics and on integrating approaches from genetics, population ecology, community and landscape ecology, and systems theory.

Core concepts in nellecologia include hierarchical organization, scale dependency, and cross-scale interactions. Researchers investigate how emergent properties arise from interactions among components at different levels, how constraints at one level shape processes at another, and how networks of interactions transmit effects across scales. Common research questions examine how local adaptations influence ecosystem services, how landscape structure modulates population dynamics, or how climate disturbances cascade through trophic networks. Methodologically, the field draws on multi-scale and hierarchical modeling, data integration across disparate sources, cross-scale experiments, and network analysis to trace pathways of influence.

History and reception of the term are evolving. Nellecologia is not yet universally adopted as a distinct, widely recognized field, and some ecologists view it as overlapping with existing traditions such as systems ecology and landscape ecology. Ongoing work seeks to clarify terminology, establish methodological standards, and demonstrate the value of the approach through case studies in conservation, restoration, and climate adaptation.

See also: Ecology, Systems ecology, Landscape ecology, Scale.