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Neutral theory and relative species abundance in ecology

Nature volume 424, pages 1035–1037 (2003)Cite this article

Abstract

The theory of island biogeography1 asserts that an island or a local community approaches an equilibrium species richness as a result of the interplay between the immigration of species from the much larger metacommunity source area and local extinction of species on the island (local community). Hubbell2 generalized this neutral theory to explore the expected steady-state distribution of relative species abundance (RSA) in the local community under restricted immigration. Here we present a theoretical framework for the unified neutral theory of biodiversity2 and an analytical solution for the distribution of the RSA both in the metacommunity (Fisher's log series) and in the local community, where there are fewer rare species. Rare species are more extinction-prone, and once they go locally extinct, they take longer to re-immigrate than do common species. Contrary to recent assertions3, we show that the analytical solution provides a better fit, with fewer free parameters, to the RSA distribution of tree species on Barro Colorado Island, Panama4, than the lognormal distribution5,6.

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Figure 1: Data on tree species abundances in 50-hectare plot of tropical forest in Barro Colorado Island, Panama4.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to O. Kargaltsev for a careful reading of the manuscript. This work was supported by NASA, by grants from the NSF, and by the Department of Plant Biology, University of Georgia.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, 104 Davey Laboratory, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, 16802, USA

    Igor Volkov & Jayanth R. Banavar

  2. Department of Plant Biology, The University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, 30602, USA

    Stephen P. Hubbell

  3. The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Box 2072, Balboa, Panama

    Stephen P. Hubbell

  4. International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA), Via Beirut 2/4, 34014, Trieste, Italy

    Amos Maritan

  5. INFM and The Abdus Salam International Center for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy

    Amos Maritan

Authors
  1. Igor Volkov
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  2. Jayanth R. Banavar
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  3. Stephen P. Hubbell
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  4. Amos Maritan
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Correspondence to Jayanth R. Banavar or Stephen P. Hubbell.

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Volkov, I., Banavar, J., Hubbell, S. et al. Neutral theory and relative species abundance in ecology. Nature 424, 1035–1037 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature01883

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