Rarity, commonness, and patterns of species richness: the mammals of Mexico

Vázquez, Luis-Bernardo; Gaston, Kevin J.

doi:10.1111/j.1466-822x.2004.00126.x

Cited by 66 publications

(73 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…Although species richness has been considered a good surrogate of biodiversity in many studies (Real et al 1993;Araújo 1999;Maes et al 2005), there are some authors who have shown that species richness is more related with the distribution of generalist species than to the distribution of rare ones (Vázquez and Gaston 2004). However, the majority of the fuzzy favourability hotspots for mammals obtained in this study coincide with those of fuzzy mammal rarity in Andalusia (Real et al 2006b).…”

Section: Surrogates Of Biodiversitycontrasting

confidence: 45%

Using crisp and fuzzy modelling to identify favourability hotspots useful to perform gap analysis

2008

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In this study, we propose the use of a favourability function to perform Gap Analysis. To exemplify this, we modelled the distribution of terrestrial mammal species in Andalusia (South of Spain) on the basis of their presence/absence on a grid of 10 km 9 10 km UTM cells (n = 961). Using logistic regression and 30 variables related with the environment, space and human influence, we obtained probabilities of occurrence for each species in each cell. We computed a crisp favourability index considering the areas as favourable or unfavourable for a species if the probability of occurrence was higher or lower than the species prevalence, respectively. We also used a favourability function and fuzzy logic to level all species to the same threshold of favourability, which allowed to compare and to combine species distributions. Adding up the fuzzy favourability values for each species in each cell we obtained a fuzzy favourability index that we compared with species richness (sum of species in each cell) and with the crisp favourability index. We performed Gap Analysis by overlapping these results with the current reserve network of Andalusia. Gaps were grouped in fewer and bigger zones after applying the favourability indices. Considerations and recommendations for the use of the favourability function to select areas of conservation interest are discussed.

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Section: Surrogates Of Biodiversitycontrasting

confidence: 45%

Using crisp and fuzzy modelling to identify favourability hotspots useful to perform gap analysis

2008

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“…It has been shown with large-scale data that common species drive species richness patterns (Jetz and Rahbek 2002; Lennon et al 2004;Vá zquez and Gaston 2004), and that the richness of common species is more closely related to environmental variation than that of rare species (Jetz and Rahbek 2002;Kreft et al 2006;Rahbek et al 2007). However, the generality of such conclusions remains to be addressed with other organism groups and across metacommunities.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Are common species sufficient in describing turnover in aquatic metacommunities along environmental and spatial gradients?

Heino

Soininen

2010

Limnology & Oceanography

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Recent findings have suggested that large-scale diversity patterns are primarily driven by widespread species, while rare species are less important in this regard. The degree to which variation in the diversity of local communities in the context of metacommunity ecology concurs with these findings has not been rigorously examined to date. It is also unknown if community turnover along environmental and spatial gradients is mostly attributable to common as opposed to rare species. We examined spatial turnover for three categories of species, all, common, and rare, in seven aquatic metacommunities using simple and partial Mantel tests. We found that variation in turnover along environmental and spatial gradients was generally similar among all, common, and rare species categories, with five of the seven data sets following this pattern. Our findings thus suggest that spatial turnover in aquatic metacommunities can often be adequately described using common species. More importantly, our findings also suggest that turnover-environment relationships can also be described relatively well using information from common species only.In recent decades, there has been a considerable increase in the number of studies addressing the causes and consequences of biodiversity in nature (Gaston 2000;Tilman 2000). Compared to studies on alpha diversity, studies addressing gamma and beta diversity have increased particularly rapidly. Beta diversity-the turnover of community composition from place to place or from time to time-has been actively studied in recent years (Koleff et al. 2003). Examination of patterns in beta diversity at multiple scales is of great importance because it helps one to understand the ways in which changes in community composition at local scales are mediated to larger spatial and temporal scales. Beta diversity can be measured as variation in community composition across space, with the focus on variability in species composition among disjointed and nonoverlapping sites (Soininen et al. 2007b). Turnover can thus be examined using distance-decay graphs, where all pairwise similarities in community composition are plotted against geographical or environmental distance between the sample pairs. This distance decay of community similarity has been examined widely in recent years (Nekola and White 1999;Soininen et al. 2007b), but this pattern remains inadequately understood for aquatic systems (Shurin et al. 2009;Leprieur et al. 2009).Moreover, there is not much information about the way in which distance decay is affected by the distribution of common vs. rare species in ecological communities. Ecological communities are typically dominated by rare species that have very restricted ranges (Gaston 2003;. Recent research has shown, however, that species richness patterns are primarily driven by widespread species, whereas species with restricted ranges contribute much less to these patterns (Jetz and Rahbek 2002;Lennon et al. 2004;Mora and Robertson 2005). The richness of widespread species may also ...

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“…Many studies, including those of British breeding birds, that have grouped species into either abundance or range size classes have also found that the commonest species exhibit the strongest species-energy relationships ( Jetz & Rahbek 2002;Ruggiero & Kitzberger 2004;Vázquez & Gaston 2004;Evans et al 2005b,c). The MIH describes the relationship between extinction risk and local population size, which may appear to contrast with our use of national Table 1.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These predictions can be tested by assessing how the richness of different species groups, such as common and rare species, respond to energy availability ( Jetz & Rahbek 2002;Ruggiero & Kitzberger 2004;Vázquez & Gaston 2004;Evans et al 2005b,c). An alternative and complementary approach, that as far as we are aware has not been previously used, is based on the principle that species richness results from the summation of occurrence data for each species in the focal assemblage.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Species traits and the form of individual species–energy relationships

et al. 2006

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Environmental energy availability explains much of the spatial variation in species richness at regional scales. While numerous mechanisms that may drive such total species-energy relationships have been identified, knowledge of their relative contributions is scant. Here, we adopt a novel approach to identify these drivers that exploits the composite nature of species richness, i.e. its summation from individual species distributions. We construct individual species-energy relationships (ISERs) for each species in the British breeding avifauna using both solar (temperature) and productive energy metrics (normalized difference vegetation index) as measures of environmental energy availability. We use the slopes of these relationships and the resultant change in deviance, relative to a null model, as measures of their strength and use them as response variables in multiple regressions that use ecological traits as predictors. The commonest species exhibit the strongest ISERs, which is counter to the prediction derived from the more individuals hypothesis. There is no evidence that predatory species have stronger ISERs, which is incompatible with the suggestion that high levels of energy availability increase the length of the food chain allowing larger numbers of predators to exist. We find some evidence that species with narrow niche breadths have stronger ISERs, thus providing one of the few pieces of supportive evidence that high-energy availability promotes species richness by increasing the occurrence of specialist species that use a narrow range of resources.

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Rarity, commonness, and patterns of species richness: the mammals of Mexico

Cited by 66 publications

References 32 publications

Using crisp and fuzzy modelling to identify favourability hotspots useful to perform gap analysis

Using crisp and fuzzy modelling to identify favourability hotspots useful to perform gap analysis

Are common species sufficient in describing turnover in aquatic metacommunities along environmental and spatial gradients?

Species traits and the form of individual species–energy relationships

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