The feasible set: Putting pattern into perspective

Ecological patterns are often used to infer the importance of ecological processes. However, it is rarely known whether sufficient variation exists among all possible forms of a pattern (i.e. the feasible set) to distinguish the effects of different processes. Despite astronomically large feasible sets, ecological patterns such as distributions of abundance can closely mirror the average and the majority of all possible forms. Feasible sets provide rich and informative contexts for examining empirical patterns and can reveal powerful influences of ecological constraint combinations, fundamental explanations for common patterns, and unanticipated problems of ecological indices.