Neutral theory and relative species abundance in ecology

The theory of island biogeography 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). Hub...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature 2003-08, Vol.424 (6952), p.1035-1037
Main Authors: Banavar, Jayanth R, Hubbell, Stephen P, Volkov, Igor, Maritan, Amos
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animal and plant ecology
Animal migration
Animal, plant and microbial ecology
Animals
Biogeography
Biological and medical sciences
Demecology
Ecology
Ecosystem
Extinction
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Gene Frequency
General aspects
General aspects. Techniques
Generalities
Geography
Habitats
Humanities and Social Sciences
Islands
letter
Models, Biological
multidisciplinary
Plant species
Plantae
Population Dynamics
Rare species
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Species extinction
Species richness
Species Specificity
Trees
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Summary:The theory of island biogeography 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). Hubbell 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 biodiversity 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 assertions, 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, Panama, than the lognormal distribution.
ISSN:0028-0836
1476-4687
DOI:10.1038/nature01883