beetle’s perspective
Landscape Ecology vol. 3 no. 2 pp 87-96 (1989)
88
that is heterogeneous from the perspective of a
ground-dwelling harvester ant, for example, may
be contained within one or two seemingly homo-
geneous patches from the perspective of a foraging
bird or a grazing ungulate.
Our thesis is that the ideas and approaches of
landscape ecology should apply at any scale of in-
vestigation and that landscape ecology is likely to
develop a strong conceptual and theoretical foun-
dation only if we shed the preoccupation with
human-scaled landscapes and adopt a multi-scale
perspective on landscape patterns and dynamics. In
particular, we advocate investigations of landscape
patterns and their effects at small,
dynamics or nutrient cy-
cling in laboratory ecosystems (Taub 1974). There
are several advantages of this microlandscape ap-
proach: (1) measurements may be taken with a level
of detail that is difficult to attain at a broader scale;
(2) sample sizes may be greater or sampling at a
given intensity may provide a more accurate
representation of the phenomenon being investigat-
ed; (3) experimental manipulations may be con-
ducted with relative ease, and (4) experiments or
observations may be replicated over many plots or
treatments with relative ease. Collectively, these
features enhance our ability to study landscapes in
a rigorous fashion and to move from Troll’s assess-
ment of landscape ecology as ‘an attitude’
