Predicting the species abundance distribution using a model food web

DOI10.1016/J.JTBI.2008.09.005MaRDI QIDQ1798285zbMATH OpenOpenAlexWikidataFDO

Authors Craig R. Powell, Alan J. McKane

Publication date 23 October 2018

Published in Journal of Theoretical Biology (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/0805.0084

zbMATH Keywords

ecological community modelecological diversitytrophic distribution

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Applications of statistics to biology and medical sciences; meta analysis (62P10) Ecology (92D40)

Abstract: A large number of models of the species abundance distribution (SAD) have been proposed, many of which are generically similar to the log-normal distribution, from which they are often indistinguishable when describing a given data set. Ecological data sets are necessarily incomplete samples of an ecosystem, subject to statistical noise, and cannot readily be combined to yield a closer approximation to the underlying distribution. In this paper we use empirical data obtained from an ecosystem model to study the predicted SAD in detail, resolving features which can distinguish between models but which are poorly seen in field data. We find that the power-law normal distribution is superior to both the log-normal and logit-normal distributions, and that the data can improve on even this at the high-population cut-off.

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Cites work

• The impact of nonlinear functional responses on the long-term evolution of food web structure

Cited in

(2)

• The effects of stochastic population dynamics on food web structure
• A new species abundance distribution model based on model combination

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