From bacteria to whales: using functional size spectra to model marine ecosystems

Size-based ecosystem modeling is emerging as a powerful way to assess ecosystem-level impacts of human- and environment-driven changes from individual-level processes. These models have evolved as mechanistic explanations for observed regular patterns of abundance across the marine size spectrum hypothesized to hold from bacteria to whales. Fifty years since the first size spectrum measurements, we ask how far have we come? Although recent modeling studies capture an impressive range of sizes, complexity, and real-world applications, ecosystem coverage is still only partial. We describe how this can be overcome by unifying functional traits with size spectra (which we call functional size spectra) and highlight the key knowledge gaps that need to be filled to model ecosystems from bacteria to whales. Size-based ecosystem models have proliferated in the past 10 years.They are a general and powerful approach to modeling ecosystem structure and function. Great progress has been made toward modeling ecosystems from bacteria to whales.Unifying models across scales and confronting models with data are now the key needs