IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/nature/v441y2006i7089d10.1038_nature04826.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Comparing models of species abundance

Author

Listed:
  • Jérôme Chave

    (Laboratoire Evolution et Diversité Biologique, UMR5174 CNRS, Université Paul Sabatier)

  • David Alonso

    (Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Michigan)

  • Rampal S. Etienne

    (Community and Conservation Ecology Group, University of Groningen)

Abstract

Arising from: I. Volkov, J. R. Banavar, F. He, S. P. Hubbell & A. Maritan Nature 438, 658–661 (2005); Volkov et al. reply . Ecologists are struggling to explain how so many tropical tree species can coexist in tropical forests, and several empirical studies have demonstrated that negative density dependence is an important mechanism of tree-species coexistence1,2. Volkov et al.3 compare a model incorporating negative density dependence with a dispersal-limited neutral model4 and claim that each predicts six empirical species-abundance distributions of tropical-tree communities equally well. However, we show here that their main conclusion is premature: when the two models are compared in an improved analysis, we find that the dispersal-limited model outcompetes the density-dependent model in all six cases. Hence, although density dependence is certainly an important diversity-maintaining mechanism, our improved approach indicates that the dispersal-limited model provides a more parsimonious explanation of empirical species-abundance distributions.

Suggested Citation

  • Jérôme Chave & David Alonso & Rampal S. Etienne, 2006. "Comparing models of species abundance," Nature, Nature, vol. 441(7089), pages 1-1, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:441:y:2006:i:7089:d:10.1038_nature04826
    DOI: 10.1038/nature04826
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature04826
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/nature04826?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Alex D Washburne & Joshua W Burby & Daniel Lacker, 2016. "Novel Covariance-Based Neutrality Test of Time-Series Data Reveals Asymmetries in Ecological and Economic Systems," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(9), pages 1-14, September.
    2. Beeravolu, Champak R. & Couteron, Pierre & Pélissier, Raphaël & Munoz, François, 2009. "Studying ecological communities from a neutral standpoint: A review of models’ structure and parameter estimation," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 220(20), pages 2603-2610.
    3. Tancredi Caruso & Jeff R Powell & Matthias C Rillig, 2012. "Compositional Divergence and Convergence in Local Communities and Spatially Structured Landscapes," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(4), pages 1-10, April.
    4. Omar Al Hammal & David Alonso & Rampal S Etienne & Stephen J Cornell, 2015. "When Can Species Abundance Data Reveal Non-neutrality?," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(3), pages 1-23, March.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:441:y:2006:i:7089:d:10.1038_nature04826. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.