A community-level fractal property produces power-law species-area relationships

In a recent paper published in Oikos, Lennon et al. (2002) claim that in order to derive a power-law species-area relationship from fractals in the distribution of species, Harte et al. (1999a) assumed that individual species distributions are fractal and that all species patterns have the same frac...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Oikos 2003-10, Vol.103 (1), p.218-224
Main Authors: Ostling, A., Harte, J., Green, J.L., Kinzig, A.P.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animal and plant ecology
Animal, plant and microbial ecology
Biological and medical sciences
Community property
Ecological processes
Ecology
Empirical evidence
Fractal dimensions
Fractals
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
General aspects
Opinions
Population ecology
Power laws
Species
Synecology
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Summary:In a recent paper published in Oikos, Lennon et al. (2002) claim that in order to derive a power-law species-area relationship from fractals in the distribution of species, Harte et al. (1999a) assumed that individual species distributions are fractal and that all species patterns have the same fractal dimension D. Inspired by empirical evidence that indicates that fractal dimension tends to vary between species, they then show that in this more realistic case of varying D, the species-area relationship does not follow a power law. Hence Lennon et al. (2002) conclude that, despite Harte et al. (1999a) derivation of the power-law species-area relationship from fractals, a fractal distribution of species is not what produces power-law species-area relationships in nature. We show here the misleading error in Lennon et al.'s (2002) critique.
ISSN:0030-1299
1600-0706
DOI:10.1034/j.1600-0706.2003.12600.x