Commonness and rarity in the marine biosphere.pdf (1010.73 kB)
Commonness and rarity in the marine biosphere
journal contribution
posted on 2023-05-19, 08:45 authored by Connolly, SR, MacNeil, MA, Caley, MJ, Knowlton, N, Cripps, E, Hisano, M, Thibaut, LM, Bhattacharya, BD, Benedetti-Cecchi, L, Brainard, RE, Brandt, A, Bulleri, F, Ellingsen, KE, Kaiser, S, Kroncke, I, Linse, K, Maggi, E, O'Hara, TD, Plaisance, L, Poore, GCB, Sarkar, SK, Satpathy, KK, Schuckel, U, Williams, A, Wilson, RSExplaining patterns of commonness and rarity is fundamental for understanding and managing biodiversity. Consequently, a key test of biodiversity theory has been how well ecological models reproduce empirical distributions of species abundances. However, ecological models with very different assumptions can predict similar species abundance distributions, whereas models with similar assumptions may generate very different predictions. This complicates inferring processes driving community structure from model fits to data. Here, we use an approximation that captures common features of "neutral" biodiversity models-which assume ecological equivalence of species-to test whether neutrality is consistent with patterns of commonness and rarity in the marine biosphere. We do this by analyzing 1,185 species abundance distributions from 14 marine ecosystems ranging from intertidal habitats to abyssal depths, and from the tropics to polar regions. Neutrality performs substantially worse than a classical nonneutral alternative: empirical data consistently show greater heterogeneity of species abundances than expected under neutrality. Poor performance of neutral theory is driven by its consistent inability to capture the dominance of the communities' most-abundant species. Previous tests showing poor performance of a neutral model for a particular system often have been followed by controversy about whether an alternative formulation of neutral theory could explain the data after all. However, our approach focuses on common features of neutral models, revealing discrepancies with a broad range of empirical abundance distributions. These findings highlight the need for biodiversity theory in which ecological differences among species, such as niche differences and demographic trade-offs, play a central role.
History
Publication title
Proceedings of the National Academy of SciencesVolume
111Issue
23Pagination
8524-8529ISSN
0027-8424Department/School
Institute for Marine and Antarctic StudiesPublisher
National Academy of SciencesPlace of publication
2101 Constitution Ave Nw, Washington, USA, Dc, 20418Rights statement
Copyright 2014 National Academy of SciencesRepository Status
- Open