The Concept of Taxon Invariance in Ecology: Do Diversity Patterns Vary with Changes in Taxonomic Resolution?

Abstract

Diversity patterns cannot be properly interpreted without a theory providing criteria for their evaluation. We propose a concept to prevent artifictions caused by improper consideration of changes in observed patterns due to variation in taxon delimitation.

Keywords

• Abundances
• Biogeography
• Distributions
• Macroecology
• Phylogeny
• Scaling
• Species-energy relationship