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Ecology

Rarity as double jeopardy

Nature volume 394, pages 229–230 (1998)Cite this article

In the introduction to his book Geographical Ecology1, published over 25 years ago, Robert H. MacArthur opened with the words, “To do science is to search for repeated patterns, not simply to accumulate facts”. Since then, the roll-call of such ecological patterns has steadily grown. Indeed, one of the most pervasive at broad geographical scales — and the subject of a paper by Johnson2 on page 272 of this issue — makes no appearance in MacArthur's book.

The pattern in question is this. For a given taxonomic assemblage at a geographical scale — say, the terrestrial mammals of Britain or the breeding birds of North America — the more abundant species tend also to be the more widely distributed3,5. This makes sense as more individuals require, on average, a larger area. However, the numbers of individuals actually increase at a faster rate than does the area over which they are distributed, such that more widely distributed species not only tend to have larger numbers of individuals but also usually occur at higher local densities. In other words, there is a positive relationship between the average local densities and the geographical distributions of species in an assemblage.

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Figure 1: ‘Recent’ and ‘ancient’ species of Australian marsupial.

J. CANCALOSI/BBC NATURAL HISTORY UNIT SLOSS/BBC NATURAAL HISTORY UNIT

References

  1. MacArthur, R. H. Geographical Ecology : Patterns in the Distribution of Species (Harper & Row, New York, 1972).

  2. Johnson, C. N. Nature 394, 272-274 (1998).

  3. Hanski, I. Oikos 38, 210-221 (1982).

  4. Brown, J. H. Am. Nat. 124, 255-279 (1984).

  5. Gaston, K. J. Oikos 75, 211-220 (1996).

  6. Walter, K. S. & Gillett, H. J. (eds) 1997 IUCN Red List of Threatened Plants (IUCN, Gland, Switzerland, 1998).

  7. Lawton, J. H. Trends Ecol. Evol. 8, 409-413 (1993).

  8. Gaston, K. J. & Blackburn, T. M. Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B 263, 63-68 (1996).

  9. Nee, S., Read, A. F., Greenwood, J. J. D. & Harvey, P. H. Nature 351, 312-313 (1991).

  10. Rees, M. J. Ecol. 83, 891-892 (1995).

  11. Harvey, P. H. J. Anim. Ecol. 65, 255-263 (1996).

  12. IUCN 1996 IUCN Red List of Threatened Animals (IUCN, Gland, Switzerland, 1996).

  13. Gaston, K. J. & Blackburn, T. M. Evol. Ecol. 11, 557-565 (1997).

  14. McDowall, R. M. Tuatara 17, 1-12 (1969).

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  1. the Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, S10 2TN, UK

    Kevin J. Gaston

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Gaston, K. Rarity as double jeopardy. Nature 394, 229–230 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/28288

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