JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. Wiley-Blackwell andNordic Society Oikos are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Oikos. MMinireviews provides an opportunity to summarize existing knowledge of selected ecological areas, with special emphasis on current topics where rapid and significant advances are occurring. Reviews should be concise and not too wide-ranging. All key REVIENV s *references should be cited. A summary is required. Community composition and nested-subset analyses: basic descriptors for community ecology Wade B. Worthen Worthen, W. B. 1996. Community composition and nested-subset analyses: basic descriptors for community ecology. -Oikos 76: 417-426.Three primary descriptors of community structure are the number, identities (composition), and abundances of species therein. Over the past 35 years, most attention has focused on relationships involving number (species-area and species-energy relationships) or abundance distributions (broken-stick, geometric, log-normal, core-satellite, etc.). Composition patterns have been underemphasized, even though several tools for addressing particular non-random patterns in species composition are available. One non-random pattern in community composition is nested subset structure. A community has a nested subset structure if the species found in depauperate replicates are also found in progressively more species-rich assemblages. In this review, the problems of failing to consider composition patterns like nestedness are described, using species-area relationships and the SLOSS debate (single large or several small reserves) as an example. In addition, nestedness analyses are promoted as: 1) important descriptive tools for determining whether a community has this common non-random pattern of species composition, and 2) as important investigative tools for suggesting mechanisms potentially structuring a community.W. B. Worthen, Biology Dept, Furman Univ., SC 29613, USA (worthengfurman.edu).

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