Metawebs as a tool to connect ecology and biogeography: A critical review

Metawebs, regional networks formed by aggregating interactions between the species pool of a given region, are emerging as a rapidly growing modelling framework in biodiversity science. They provide a powerful link between local ecological interactions and broader biogeographic patterns and processes. Furthermore, metawebs allow biodiversity scientists to address how environmental change affects energy and biomass flows within species communities at continental to global scales. Being a fast-moving field of ecology, several relevant challenges remain. At the same time, as global change accelerates, metawebs are likely to become a central tool for uniting ecological interaction theory with broad spatial-temporal scales, informing both fundamental biodiversity research and conservation practice. In this review, we discuss the role of metawebs as an increasingly evolving ecological modelling framework in macroecology and biogeography, outlining their usefulness and applications, shortcomings and challenges and future directions.