Crossover in Scaling Regimes in Species-Area Relationships

The observation and elucidation of power-law scaling of Species-area relationships has recently emerged as an area of significant interest. This study takes guidance from some prior studies to identify some salient features of the distribution of inter-species populations over multiple scaling regimes. Particularly, we seek to explain the transition from weak to strong scaling in the species-area relationship as the scale is expanded through ecological meso-zone to inter-biome scales. We explore a Poisson-withoutreplacement process as a simplified model of the type of sampling that would produce such a cross-over behavior, producing weak dependence and strong-scaling regimes, as well as effective weak-scaling exponents that span several decades of scaling factors.

By: Daniel E. Platt

Published in: RC24040 in 2006

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