The number of authors from different countries have recently increased in ecology papers, but the international collaboration among ecologists does not occur in an idiosyncratic way. In this paper, we quantified the level of international collaboration in ecology papers and the influence of geographic distance and socioeconomic factors on collaboration between countries. We obtained all papers from Thomson-ISI, classified as subject ecology between years 2000 and 2014 (total of 62,667 papers with international collaboration in 179 countries). The gravity model (binomial negative model) indicated that the level of international collaboration is moderate spatially structured, decreasing as the geographical distance among countries increase. Moreover, the geographic distance and socioeconomic factors explained 10% of the scientific collaboration among countries (Pseudo R2 = 0.10). Highly collaborative countries were found in similar trade blocs, with similar Human Development Index, similar scientific structure (i.e., number of citation per documents) and tended to be geographically close. Thus, international collaboration will continue increasing, and young ecologists will experience international collaboration, even with distant countries (both geographical and socioeconomic)

MRP and KBM received a scholarship from Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES). Our work on ecology and experience in scientific collaboration has been continuously supported by different grants: Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) (Project No. 563834/2010-2), CAPES (Science without border-PVE A100/2013), and National Institutes for Science and Technology (INCT) in Ecology, Evolution and Biodiversity Conservation, supported by MCTIC/CNPq (proc. 465610/2014-5) and FAPEG. RL received a scholarship from Science without border program (CAPES). JAFD-F and JCN were supported by CNPq productivity fellowships

12 pages, 4 figures, 1 table, supplementary material https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11192-017-2502-z

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