Research output: Contribution to journal › Article
Species abundance distributions are an important measure of biodiversity and community structure. These distributions are affected by sampling, and alternative species-abundance models often make similar predictions for small sample sizes. Very large samples reveal the relative abundances of rare species, and thus provide information about species relative abundances that small samples cannot. Here, we present the species-abundance distribution for a sample of > 40 000 coral colonies at a single site, exceeding existing samples of coral local assemblages by over an order of magnitude. This abundance distribution is multimodal when examined on a logarithmic scale. Four different model selection procedures all indicate that the underlying community abundance distribution has at least three modes. We show that the multiple modes are not caused by mixtures of species with different habitat preferences. However, spatial aggregation partially explains our results. We inspect published work on species abundance distributions, and suggest that multimodality may be a common feature of large samples.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 1008-1016 |
Number of pages | 9 |
Journal | Ecology Letters |
Volume | 11 |
Issue number | 10 |
Early online date | 8 Jul 2008 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Oct 2008 |
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Research output: Contribution to journal › Article
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article
Activity: Publication peer-review and editorial work types › Editor of research journal
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article
Research output: Contribution to journal › Review article
ID: 18742258