Species Abundance Distribution

Abstract

This chapter provides some models for quantifying species abundance distribution, a very basic but important pattern in ecological and biodiversity studies. The metrics for species abundance distribution covered only some common used ones in this book, like Zipf model, Broken stick model, Niche preemption model and Neutral model. An empirical data set, the species abundance distribution for Collembola, Mesostigmata and Oribatida found in Southwest of Canada was fitted by the above alternative models and the best model was selected through model comparison. Some simple methods for conducting model comparison have been referred in this chapter of the book.

Keywords: Akaike information criteria, biodiversity metrics, Canada, Collembola, ecological laws, Mesostigmata, mite ecology, model comparison and selection, niche versus neutrality, Oribatida, species abundance and distribution, species abundance distribution, statistical probability.