John Harte, an ecologist and SFI External Professor, is featured in Quanta Magazine for his novel approach to quantifying species in complex ecosystems.

His maximum entropy theory (MaxEnt) gives ecologists a purchase on the difficult task of estimating the total number of species in a vast area using data from a small plot of land. The article describes Harte’s successful prediction of the number of tree species in India’s Western Ghats, published in 2009, and also his more recent estimate of arthropod species in the amazon. 

The article quotes Harte as saying “Once I realized you could do it, I realized there’s no reason to stop at 50 hectares. You can go up, up, up,” after he performed preliminary calculations for what would become the MaxEnt theory.  

Read the article in Quanta Magazine (September 3, 2014)

Read the reprint in WIRED (September 22, 2013)

Read Harte’s 2009 paper in Ecology letters (subscription required) (August 12, 2009)