Relative abundance distributions of species: the need to have a new look at them

Ulrich, Werner

doi:ISSN 1505-2249

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Title: Relative abundance distributions of species: the need to have a new look at them

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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