On the origin and robustness of power-law species–area relationships in ecology
- 5 July 2006
- journal article
- Published by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Vol. 103 (27) , 10310-10315
- https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0510605103
Abstract
We present an explanation for the widely reported power-law species–area relationship (SAR), which relates the area occupied by a biome to the number of species that it supports. We argue that power-law SARs are a robust consequence of a skewed species abundance distribution resembling a lognormal with higher rarity, together with the observation that individuals of a given species tend to cluster. We show that the precise form of the SAR transcends the specific details of organism interactions, enabling us to characterize its broad trends across taxa.Keywords
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