Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Article
  • Published:

Patterns of relative species abundance in rainforests and coral reefs

Nature volume 450, pages 45–49 (2007)Cite this article

Abstract

A formidable many-body problem in ecology is to understand the complex of factors controlling patterns of relative species abundance (RSA) in communities of interacting species. Unlike many problems in physics, the nature of the interactions in ecological communities is not completely known. Although most contemporary theories in ecology start with the basic premise that species interact, here we show that a theory in which all interspecific interactions are turned off leads to analytical results that are in agreement with RSA data from tropical forests and coral reefs. The assumption of non-interacting species leads to a sampling theory for the RSA that yields a simple approximation at large scales to the exact theory. Our results show that one can make significant theoretical progress in ecology by assuming that the effective interactions among species are weak in the stationary states in species-rich communities such as tropical forests and coral reefs.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: Relative species abundance of coral-reef communities.
Figure 2: Similarity index for coral-reef communities.
Figure 3: Relative species abundance of tropical forests.
Figure 4: Sampling of BCI tropical-forest data.
Figure 5: Similarity index for the BCI plot.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Hubbell, S. P. The Unified Neutral Theory of Biodiversity and Biogeography (Princeton Univ. Press, Princeton, 2001)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Volkov, I., Banavar, J. R., Hubbell, S. P. & Maritan, A. Neutral theory and relative species abundance in ecology. Nature 424, 1035–1037 (2003)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  3. Volkov, I., Banavar, J. R., He, F., Hubbell, S. P. & Maritan, A. Density and frequency dependence explains tree species abundance and diversity in tropical forests. Nature 438, 658–661 (2005)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  4. Latimer, A. M., Silander, J. A. & Cowling, R. M. Neutral ecological theory reveals isolation and rapid speciation in a biodiversity hot spot. Science 309, 1722–1725 (2005)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  5. Etienne, R. S., Latimer, A. M., Silander, J. A. & Cowling, R. M. Comment on “Neutral ecological theory reveals isolation and rapid speciation in a biodiversity hot spot”. Science 311, 610 (2006)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Connolly, S. R., Hughes, T. P., Bellwood, D. R. & Karlson, R. H. Community structure of corals and reef fishes at multiple scales. Science 309, 1363–1365 (2005)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  7. Dornelas, M., Connolly, S. R. & Hughes, T. P. Coral reef diversity refutes the neutral theory of biodiversity. Nature 440, 80–82 (2006)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  8. Alonso, D. & Pascual, M. Comment on “A keystone mutualism drives pattern in a power function”. Science 313, 1739 (2006)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  9. Etienne, R. S., Alonso, D. & McKane, A. J. The zero-sum assumption in neutral biodiversity theory. J. Theor. Biol. 248, 522–536 (2007)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  10. Alonso, D. & McKane, A. J. Sampling Hubbell’s neutral theory of biodiversity. Ecol. Lett. 7, 901–910 (2004)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Etienne, R. S. & Olff, H. A novel genealogical approach to neutral biodiversity theory. Ecol. Lett. 7, 170–175 (2004)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Etienne, R. S. A new sampling formula for neutral biodiversity. Ecol. Lett. 8, 253–260 (2005)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Etienne, R. S. & Alonso, D. A dispersal-limited sampling theory for species and alleles. Ecol. Lett. 8, 1147–1156 (2005); erratum. 9, 500 (2006)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Etienne, R. S. & Alonso, D. Neutral community theory: how stochasticity and dispersal-limitation can explain species coexistence. J. Stat. Phys. 128, 485–510 (2006)

    Article  ADS  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  15. Courchamp, F., Clutton-Brock, T. & Grenfell, B. Inverse density dependence and the Allee effect. Trends Ecol. Evol. 14, 405–410 (1999)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  16. Harte, J. Tail of death and resurrection. Nature 424, 1006–1007 (2003)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  17. Maxwell, J. C. The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell Vol. 1 (Dover, New York, 2003)

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  18. van der Waals, J. D. On the Continuity of the Gaseous and Liquid States (Dover, New York, 2004)

    Google Scholar 

  19. Rannala, B. The sampling theory of neutral alleles in an island population of fluctuating size. Theor. Popul. Biol. 50, 91–104 (1996)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  20. Press, W. H., Flannery, B. P., Teukolsky, S. A. & Vetterling, W. T. Numerical Recipes in C: The Art of Scientific Computing (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 1993)

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  21. Feller, W. An Introduction to Probability Theory and Its Applications Vol. 1 (Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, 1968)

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  22. Van Kampen, N. G. Stochastic Processes in Physics and Chemistry (North-Holland, Amsterdam, 2001)

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  23. Kendall, D. G. Stochastic processes and population growth. J. Roy. Statist. Soc. B 11, 230–282 (1949)

    MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  24. Mosimann, J. E. On the compound multinomial distribution, the multivariate distribution, and correlations among proportions. Biometrika 49, 65–82 (1962)

    MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  25. Fisher, R. A., Corbet, A. S. & Williams, C. B. The relation between the number of species and the number of individuals in a random sample of an animal population. J. Anim. Ecol. 12, 42–58 (1943)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Rao, C. R. Statistical Ecology Vol. 1, Spatial Patterns and Statistical Distributions 131–142 (Penn. State Univ. Press, University Park, Pennsylvania, 1971)

    Google Scholar 

  27. Pielou, E. C. An Introduction to Mathematical Ecology (Wiley, New York, 1969)

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  28. Bulmer, M. G. On fitting the Poisson lognormal distribution to species-abundance data. Biometrics 30, 101–110 (1974)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Dewdney, A. K. A general theory of the sampling process with applications to the veil line. Theor. Popul. Biol. 54, 294–302 (1998)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We thank D. Alonso for bringing some key references to our attention and for spending an enormous amount of time in helping improve our paper. We thank D. Thomas, G. Chuyong and D. Kenfack for the data from Korup National Park, Cameroon; R. Valencia, R. Foster and R. Condit for the data from Yasuni Natinal Park, Ecuador; S. Davies, S. Tan, J. LaFrankie and P. Ashton for the data from Lambir Hills National Park, Sarawak; N. Supardi, P. Ashton and J. LaFrankie for the data from Pasoh Forest Reserve, Peninsular Malaysia; and Hubbell’s collaborators on the Barro Colorado Island plot, R. Foster and R. Condit. We also thank S. Davies for directing and coordinating the global programs of the Center for Tropical Forest Science (CTFS), which manages the plots, S. Loo for data management, and I. Rubinoff, Director of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, the host institution of CTFS. The fieldwork has also received long-term support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, Earthwatch, Frank Levinson and the Celera Foundation, and other private foundations and individual donors. We thank S. Connolly, M. Dornelas and T. Hughes for sending us the coral-reef data. This work was supported by COFIN 2005 and by the NSF.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, 104 Davey Laboratory,

    Igor Volkov & Jayanth R. Banavar

  2. Department of Biology, Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802, USA,

    Igor Volkov

  3. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, The University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA,

    Stephen P. Hubbell

  4. The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Unit 0948, APO AA 34002, Panama

    Stephen P. Hubbell

  5. Dipartimento di Fisica ‘G. Galilei’, Università di Padova CNISM and INFN, via Marzolo 8, 35131 Padova, Italy,

    Amos Maritan

Authors
  1. Igor Volkov
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Jayanth R. Banavar
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Stephen P. Hubbell
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Amos Maritan
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Jayanth R. Banavar or Amos Maritan.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Equations

The file contains Supplementary Equations which show derivation of Eq.(2) for the joint RSA of two local communities comprising the metacommunity. (PDF 87 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Volkov, I., Banavar, J., Hubbell, S. et al. Patterns of relative species abundance in rainforests and coral reefs. Nature 450, 45–49 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature06197

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature06197

This article is cited by

Comments

By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines. If you find something abusive or that does not comply with our terms or guidelines please flag it as inappropriate.

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing