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3 - The distribution of species: occupancy, scale, and rarity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2012

By
Fangliang He  and
Rick Condit
Edited by
David Storch ,
Pablo Marquet  and
James Brown
Fangliang He
Affiliation:
University of Alberta
Rick Condit
Affiliation:
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
David Storch
Affiliation:
Charles University, Prague
Pablo Marquet
Affiliation:
Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile
James Brown
Affiliation:
University of New Mexico
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Summary

Introduction

Species occupancy is typically measured as the number of cells occupied by the species in a study area. Because it is easy to document and interpret and it correlates with species abundance, occupancy is widely used for measuring species rarity and for assessing extinction risk on which conservation decisions are made (Gaston, 1994; Fagan et al., 2002; Hartley & Kunin, 2003; Wilson et al., 2004). Ecologists and conservation practitioners, however, have long realized that occupancy often fails to capture significant spatial features of distribution. It is possible that two species having the same occupancy can exhibit very different patterns (Fig. 3.1). Most species in nature are discretely distributed due to the patchiness of landscapes, or due to intrinsic reproductive or dispersal behavior of the species. An outstanding problem concerning species distribution in space is how to describe the patchiness of a species and to measure the effect of changing spatial scale (cell size) on the patchiness for the purpose of predicting distribution at fine scales from coarse scales.

There are two primary approaches to addressing this question. The first one is to use existing measures and methods to describe patchiness and scale effect. Many fragmentation indices in landscape ecology can be used for this purpose (Turner, Gardner & O'Neill, 2001; Wu et al., 2003). These include edge length (perimeter), the number of patches, perimeter/area ratio and many other indices to capture the spatial features of species distribution.

Type
Chapter
Information
Scaling Biodiversity , pp. 32 - 50
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2007

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