Open AccessComment on "A Keystone Mutualism Drives Pattern in a Power Function"
Author(s) -
Salvador Pueyo,
Roger Jovani
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 12.556
H-Index - 1186
eISSN - 1095-9203
pISSN - 0036-8075
DOI - 10.1126/science.1129595
Subject(s) - mutualism (biology) , power law , range (aeronautics) , keystone species , exponent , ecology , biology , evolutionary biology , statistical physics , physics , mathematics , statistics , engineering , ecosystem , aerospace engineering , linguistics , philosophy
Vandermeer and Perfecto (Reports, 17 February 2006, p. 1000) maintain that a mutualist ant disrupts the power law distribution of scale insect abundances. However, reanalysis of the data reveals that ants cause an increase in the range of the power law and modify its exponent. We present a tentative, but more realistic, model that is suitable for quantitative predictions.Peer Reviewe