Subtitle:

Relative abundance distributions

Contributor:

Polish Academy of Sciences. Institute of Ecology

Publisher:

Polish Academy of Sciences. Institute of Ecology. Publishing Office

Place of publishing:

Dziekanów Leśny

Description:

Pages 391-405 : illustrations ; 27 cm ; Bibliographical references (pages 403-405)

Type of object:

Journal/Article

Abstract:

This paper shows that recent models of relative abundances (RADs) like the log-normal model or sequential breakage or niche apportionment models are not able to describe and explain RADs found in natural communities because they are derived from a classical niche concept and assume strong past or present interspecific competition. None of them refers especially to temporal variability and functional niche dimensions. The present paper identifies three basic features of natural communities (unimodal species-weight distributions, abundance-weight distributions with more or less marked upper boundaries, and species density fluctuations that can be modelled by four different random processes). Modelling communities with these basic features resulted in RADs that only in part could be described by classical models but that had shapes often found in samplings from larger natural communities. No single distribution like the canonical log-normal appeared that may serve as a general null-model but RAD and evolutionary strategy (r-or K selection) seem to be related. The shape of relative abundance distributions was found to depend on the number of species even if all parameter setting of the generating distributions were identical. This indicates that classical evenness indices (that assume independence of species number) might not be appropriate to compare communities with different numbers of species. It appeared that RAD and body weight related community patterns have to be studied together.

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Relation:

Polish Journal of Ecology

Volume:

49

Issue:

4

Start page:

391

End page:

405

Detailed Resource Type:

Article

Resource Identifier:

oai:rcin.org.pl:115852 ; ISSN 1505-2249

Source:

MiIZ PAN, call no. P.2840 ; click here to follow the link

Language:

eng

Language of abstract:

Rights:

Creative Commons Attribution BY 3.0 PL license

Terms of use:

Copyright-protected material. [CC BY 3.0 PL] May be used within the scope specified in Creative Commons Attribution BY 3.0 PL license, full text available at: ; -

Digitizing institution:

Museum and Institute of Zoology of the Polish Academy of Sciences

Original in:

Library of the Museum and Institute of Zoology of the Polish Academy of Sciences

Projects co-financed by:

Operational Program Digital Poland, 2014-2020, Measure 2.3: Digital accessibility and usefulness of public sector information; funds from the European Regional Development Fund and national co-financing from the state budget.

Access:

Open