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A model of the species rank‐abundance relation for a community in an open habitat
Author(s) -
Kobayashi Shiro
Publication year - 1980
Publication title -
population ecology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.819
H-Index - 59
eISSN - 1438-390X
pISSN - 1438-3896
DOI - 10.1007/bf02513535
Subject(s) - abundance (ecology) , rarefaction (ecology) , rank abundance curve , relative abundance distribution , habitat , biology , relative species abundance , ecology , corollary , rank (graph theory) , spatial distribution , species diversity , species richness , statistics , mathematics , combinatorics
Summary A mathematical model is proposed to describe the relationship between the abundance and the rank of species in order from the most abundant to the least in a community in an open habitat. This model is derived as a corollary of a species‐area equation ( Kobayashi , 1975) which could be expected in the case where the individuals of each species are uniformly distributed over a habitat area. Numerical simulation reveals that a rank‐abundance curve for a universe results in different species‐area or species‐individual curves according to the spatial distribution of individuals, and that the relative abundance of each species in a sample varies with sample size unless the spatial distribution of individuals is uniform. A species‐individual curve obtained by Sanders 's (1968) rarefaction method agrees with that observed actually only for the spatially uniform distribution. Change in the pattern of rank‐abundance curve with species diversity and with sample size is discussed in relation to the present model.