A model for the species–area–habitat relationship

Aim  To propose a model (the choros model) for species diversity, which embodies number of species, area and habitat diversity and mathematically unifies area per se and habitat hypotheses. Location  Species richness patterns from a broad scale of insular biotas, both from island and mainland ecosystems are analysed. Methods  Twenty‐two different data sets from seventeen studies were examined in this work. The r 2 values and the Akaike's Information Criterion (AIC) were used in order to compare the quality of fit of the choros model with the Arrhenius species–area model. The classic method of log‐log transformation was applied. Results  In twenty of the twenty‐two cases studied, the proposed model gave a better fit than the classic species–area model. The values of z parameter derived from choros model are generally lower than those derived from the classic species–area equation. Main conclusions  The choros model can express the effects of area and habitat diversity on species richness, unifying area per se and the habitat hypothesis, which as many authors have noticed are not mutually exclusive but mutually supplementary. The use of habitat diversity depends on the specific determination of the ‘habitat’ term, which has to be defined based on the natural history of the taxon studied. Although the values of the z parameter are reduced, they maintain their biological significance as described by many authors in the last decades. The proposed model can also be considered as a stepping‐stone in our understanding of the small island effect.