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The species‐area relation for archipelago biotas: Islands as samples from a species pool
Author(s) -
Kobayashi Shiro
Publication year - 1983
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/bf02515600
Subject(s) - archipelago , habitat , insular biogeography , ecology , biology , mainland
Summary If the immigration of species from a mainland or among islands is taken into account, each island of an archipelago can be regarded as a sample from a species pool. When two or more islands are combined so as to give larger samples, the resultant species‐area relation does not differ from that observed in a continuous and homogeneous habitat on a mainland. This relation can be described by either of the two mathematical models proposed before ( Kobayashi , 1975, 1976). A power function seems to be insufficient because the discrepancy between the observed and the calculated values becomes larger with the increasing area. In a log‐log plot, the slope values for these alternatives to a power function vary continuously from 1 to 0 as the area increases. Owing to the spatially clumped distribution of each species, the number of species found on a single island is less than that found on several smaller islands of equivalent total area. Hence the species‐area relation for individual islands has a smaller slope value than that obtained by combining the different numbers of islands and approaches a power function in form. From these results, it is concluded that the species‐area data on archipelago biotas are equivalent to the case where separate samples of different sizes are drawn from a universe in which each species is spatially distributed in clumps. The properties of archipelago biotas which have so far been evidenced or predicted are consistent with this conclusion.