Ignore the Forest, Focus on Trees
The article is about a biologist named Jim Clark who is studying the niches of individual trees in order to learn more about biodiversity. Clark states his method of studying, “We take this very complex, high-dimensional thing called the environment, and average out all the variation that organisms really require...Biodiversity is very much a niche response, but it’s just not evident at the species level.”
According to the article, species don't compete with other species, they compete with themselves. Clark has compiled 22,000 individual accounts, in 11 forests and 3 regions. Clark observes the environment of the specimen to determine it's niche, as stated in the article: “We take environmental variation and project it down to a very small set of indices. Light becomes average light per year. Moisture becomes average moisture per year. It’s not just light and water and nitrogen — it’s variations of each of those things, in different dimensions,”
Overall, I found the article to be a very unique and enlightening look into studying biodiversity and niches. It's very interesting to see how specimens from the same species can be completely different from one another.