Explaining the excess of rare species in natural species abundance distributions

The observation that a few species in ecological communities are exceptionally abundant, whereas most are rare, prompted the development of species abundance models. Nevertheless, despite the large literature on the commonness and rarity of species inspired by these pioneering studies, some widespread empirical patterns of species abundance resist easy explanation. Notable among these is the observation that in large assemblages there are more rare species than the log normal model predicts. Here we use a long-term (21-year) data set, from an estuarine fish community, to show how an ecological community can be separated into two components. Core species, which are persistent, abundant and biologically associated with estuarine habitats, are log normally distributed. Occasional species occur infrequently in the record, are typically low in abundance and have different habitat requirements; they follow a log series distribution. These distributions are overlaid, producing the negative skew that characterizes real data sets.     

Neutral theory and relative species abundance in ecology

The theory of island biogeography asserts that an island or a local community approaches an equilibrium species richness as a result of the interplay between the immigration of species from the much larger metacommunity source area and local extinction of species on the island (local community). Hubbell generalized this neutral theory to explore the expected steady-state distribution of relative species abundance (RSA) in the local community under restricted immigration. Here we present a theoretical framework for the unified neutral theory of biodiversity and an analytical solution for the distribution of the RSA both in the metacommunity (Fisher's log series) and in the local community, where there are fewer rare species. Rare species are more extinction-prone, and once they go locally extinct, they take longer to re-immigrate than do common species. Contrary to recent assertions, we show that the analytical solution provides a better fit, with fewer free parameters, to the RSA distribution of tree species on Barro Colorado Island, Panama, than the lognormal distribution.     

Fishing elevates variability in the abundance of exploited species

The separation of the effects of environmental variability from the impacts of fishing has been elusive, but is essential for sound fisheries management. We distinguish environmental effects from fishing effects by comparing the temporal variability of exploited versus unexploited fish stocks living in the same environments. Using the unique suite of 50-year-long larval fish surveys from the California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations we analyse fishing as a treatment effect in a long-term ecological experiment. Here we present evidence from the marine environment that exploited species exhibit higher temporal variability in abundance than unexploited species. This remains true after accounting for life-history effects, abundance, ecological traits and phylogeny. The increased variability of exploited populations is probably caused by fishery-induced truncation of the age structure, which reduces the capacity of populations to buffer environmental events. Therefore, to avoid collapse, fisheries must be managed not only to sustain the total viable biomass but also to prevent the significant truncation of age structure. The double jeopardy of fishing to potentially deplete stock sizes and, more immediately, to amplify the peaks and valleys of population variability, calls for a precautionary management approach.     

Patterns of relative species abundance in rainforests and coral reefs

A formidable many-body problem in ecology is to understand the complex of factors controlling patterns of relative species abundance (RSA) in communities of interacting species. Unlike many problems in physics, the nature of the interactions in ecological communities is not completely known. Although most contemporary theories in ecology start with the basic premise that species interact, here we show that a theory in which all interspecific interactions are turned off leads to analytical results that are in agreement with RSA data from tropical forests and coral reefs. The assumption of non-interacting species leads to a sampling theory for the RSA that yields a simple approximation at large scales to the exact theory. Our results show that one can make significant theoretical progress in ecology by assuming that the effective interactions among species are weak in the stationary states in species-rich communities such as tropical forests and coral reefs.     

Density dependence explains tree species abundance and diversity in tropical forests

The recurrent patterns in the commonness and rarity of species in ecological communities--the relative species abundance--have puzzled ecologists for more than half a century. Here we show that the framework of the current neutral theory in ecology can easily be generalized to incorporate symmetric density dependence. We can calculate precisely the strength of the rare-species advantage that is needed to explain a given RSA distribution. Previously, we demonstrated that a mechanism of dispersal limitation also fits RSA data well. Here we compare fits of the dispersal and density-dependence mechanisms for empirical RSA data on tree species in six New and Old World tropical forests and show that both mechanisms offer sufficient and independent explanations. We suggest that RSA data cannot by themselves be used to discriminate among these explanations of RSA patterns--empirical studies will be required to determine whether RSA patterns are due to one or the other mechanism, or to some combination of both.     

静电增强纤维过滤压力降公式推导

静电增强纤维过滤是非稳态过程,其压力降随时间变化,但现有研究中定量描述的几乎没有。为得出压力降随时间变化的关系式,在推导静电增强纤维过滤非稳态压力降公式时将压力降视为由滤料及沉降粉尘共同作用而产生,并认为带电后的粉尘受极化力的作用而有形成“粉尘粒子串”的趋势,从而得出静电增强纤维过滤非稳态压力降公式,此式可用于定量计算和定性分析。     

幂指数方程拟合物种多度分布模型的研究

物种多度分布是物种多样性研究的重要方法之一,首次提出用幂指数方程来拟合物种多度分布模型,实例拟合结果表明,幂指函数应用于物种多度分布研究是理想的,从而丰富了物种多度分布模型理论。     

流化床颗粒层过滤器过滤元件阻力模型

基于流体流动的连续性原理,在达西定理（Darcy‘s law)的基础上,建立了新型流化床颗粒层过滤器过滤元件阻力的通用分析模型。并在各元件气流流动和滤饼形成均匀等条件下,建立了理想状况下过渡元件阻力模型,将元件阻力分为基本阻力和附加阻力,在系统阻力的计算中只需计入基本阻力,而附加阻力则在料层阻力中考虑,从而为过滤元件阻力的实验研究奠定了基础。