Abstract
The observation that a few species in ecological communities are exceptionally abundant, whereas most are rare, prompted the development of species abundance models1,2,3. Nevertheless, despite the large literature on the commonness and rarity of species inspired by these pioneering studies, some widespread empirical patterns of species abundance resist easy explanation4. Notable among these is the observation5 that in large assemblages there are more rare species than the log normal model predicts6,7. Here we use a long-term (21-year) data set, from an estuarine fish community, to show how an ecological community can be separated into two components. Core species, which are persistent, abundant and biologically associated with estuarine habitats, are log normally distributed. Occasional species occur infrequently in the record, are typically low in abundance and have different habitat requirements; they follow a log series distribution. These distributions are overlaid, producing the negative skew that characterizes real data sets.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 51 print issues and online access
$199.00 per year
only $3.90 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on Springer Link
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Motomura, I. On the statistical treatment of communities [in Japanese]. Zool. Mag., Tokyo 44, 379–383 (1932)
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)
Preston, F. W. The commonness, and rarity, of species. Ecology 29, 254–283 (1948)
Brown, J. H. Towards a general theory of biodiversity. Evolution 55, 2137–2138 (2001)
Nee, S., Harvey, P. H. & May, R. M. Lifting the veil on abundance patterns. Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B 243, 161–163 (1991)
Hubbell, S. P. The Unified Neutral Theory of Biodiversity and Biogeography (Princeton Univ. Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 2001)
Gaston, K. J. & Blackburn, T. M. Macroecology (Blackwell Science, Oxford, 2000)
May, R. M. in Ecology and Evolution of Communities (eds Cody, M. L. & Diamond, J. M.) 81–120 (Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1975)
Sugihara, G. Minimal community structure: an explanation of species abundance patterns. Am. Nat. 116, 770–787 (1980)
Harte, J., Kinzig, A. & Green, J. Self-similarity in the distribution and abundance of species. Science 284, 334–336 (1999)
Lythgoe, J. & Lythgoe, G. Fishes of the Sea (Blandford, London, 1971)
Wheeler, A. The Fishes of the British Isles (Macmillan, London, 1969)
Krebs, C. J. Ecological Methodology, 2nd edn (Harper & Row, New York, 1999)
Magurran, A. E. Ecological Diversity and its Measurement (Princeton Univ. Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1988)
Southwood, R. & Henderson, P. A. Ecological Methods (Blackwell Science, Oxford, 2000)
Southwood, T. R. E. The Croonian Lecture 1995. Natural communities: structure and dynamics. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B 351, 1113–1129 (1996)
Brown, J. H., Whitham, T. G., Ernest, S. K. M. & Gehring, C. A. Complex species interactions and the dynamics of ecological systems: long term experiments. Science 293, 643–650 (2001)
Henderson, P. A. & Seaby, R. M. H. On the factors influencing juvenile flatfish abundance in the lower Severn Estuary. Neth. J. Sea Res. 32, 321–330 (1994)
Henderson, P. A. & Corps, M. The role of temperature and cannibalism in interannual recruitment variation of bass in British waters. J. Fish Biol. 50, 280–295 (1997)
Henderson, P. A. & Seaby, R. M. H. Population stability of the sea snail at the southern edge of its range. J. Fish Biol. 54, 1161–1176 (1999)
Henderson, P. A. On variation in the dab, Limanda limanda, recruitment: a zoogeographic study. J. Sea Res. 40, 131–142 (1988)
Rodrigues, A. S. L., Gaston, K. J. & Gregory, R. D. Using presence–absence data to establish reserve selection procedures that are robust to temporal species turnover. Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B 267, 897–902 (2000)
Henderson, P. A. & Holmes, R. H. A. On the population dynamics of dab, sole and flounder within Bridgwater bay in the lower Severn Estuary, England. Neth. J. Sea Res. 27, 337–344 (1991)
Henderson, P. A. & Holmes, R. H. A. Population stability over a ten-year period in the short-lived fish Liparis liparis (L.). J. Fish Biol. 37, 605–616 (1990)
Turnpenny, A. W. H. The use of multiple regression analysis in formulating operating strategies for power impingement problems (CEGB publication RD/L/2043N81, Central Electricity Generating Board, Leatherhead, 1981)
Acknowledgements
We thank R. Seaby and R. Somes for assistance with fieldwork.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare that they have no competing financial interests.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Magurran, A., Henderson, P. Explaining the excess of rare species in natural species abundance distributions. Nature 422, 714–716 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature01547
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature01547
This article is cited by
-
Common chironomids drive the biodiversity–temperature relationship during the Younger Dryas-Holocene transition in a southern Baltic coastal lake
Hydrobiologia (2024)
-
Niche and neutral-based processes differ in importance for common and rare species in a metacommunity of anurans in subtropical grasslands
Hydrobiologia (2024)
-
Unveiling global species abundance distributions
Nature Ecology & Evolution (2023)
-
Landscape homogenisation and simplified butterfly community structure go on par across Northern Austria
Landscape Ecology (2023)
-
Habitat specificity and morphology-main filters for the distribution of Odonata in the Cerrado Maranhense, Brazil
Aquatic Ecology (2023)
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.