Species abundance distribution results from a spatial analogy of central limit theorem.

Abstract

The frequency distribution of species abundances [the species abundance distribution (SAD)] is considered to be a fundamental characteristic of community structure. We show that this splicing, if applied repeatedly to produce subplots of progressively larger size, leads to the observed shape of the SAD for the whole plot regardless of that of the SADs of those subplots.

Keywords

• log-normal distribution
• spatial autocorrelation
• spatial turnover