Working Group on Species Relative Abundance
Participants: Andrea Jones
Summary statement:
Abundance and distribution patterns of species have long been observed and described by ecologists. The patterns are most often described by mathematical distributions, the log-series and the lognormal. While these distributions describe the observed patterns, they provide little insight into the ecological processes behind the pattern (Hughes 1986). More recently, attempts have been made to describe abundance patterns by neutral models based on the stochastic, birth-death-immigration processes of equivalent species. Comparing neutral model results with observed pattern and figuring out where the patterns do not match should identify features of the community that require "explanation in terms of mechanisms acting differentially on species" (Bell 2000).
The first job for this group is
to describe the observed patterns in the data (and to find the appropriate
ways to do so). Several questions follow from this process: 1) Are the patterns
in the GOS dataset similar to those observed for other taxa?; 2) Can these
patterns be replicated by the neutral model?; 3) Do the patterns change with
scale and does the ability of the neutral model to match the patterns change
with scale?
Outline of activities: [coming soon?]
Other documents and information:
Readings:
Bell, G. 2000. The Distribution of Abundance in Neutral Communities. The American Naturalist 155: 607-617.
Bell, G. 2001. Neutral Macroecology. Science 293: 2413-2418.
Borda-de-Agua, L., Hubbell, S. P., and M. McAllister. 2002. Species-Area Curves, Diversity Indices, and Species Abundance Distributions: A Multifractal Anallysis. The American Naturalist 159: 138-155.
Brown, J. H. 1984. On the relationship between the abundance and distribution of species. The American Naturalist 124: 255-279.
Gaston, K. J., Blackburn, T. M., Greenwood, J., Gregory, R. D., Quinn, R. M., and J. H. Lawton. 2000. Abundance-occupancy relationships. Journal of Applied Ecology 37:39-59.
Holt, R. D.,.Lawton, J. H., Gaston, K. J., and T. M. Blackburn. 1997. On the relationship between range size and local abundance: back to basics. Oikos 78: 183-190.
Hughes, R. G. 1986. Theories and Models of Species Abundance. The American Naturalist 128: 879-899.
Mouillot, D., Lepretre, A., Andrei_Ruiz, M. C., and D. Viale. 2000. The Fractal Model: a new model to describe the species accumulation process and relative abundance distribution (RAD). Oikos 90: 333-342.
Preston, F. W. 1948. The commonness
and rarity of species. Ecology 29: 254-283.