This chapter provides some models for quantifying species abundance
distribution, a very basic but important pattern in ecological and biodiversity studies.
The metrics for species abundance distribution covered only some common used ones
in this book, like Zipf model, Broken stick model, Niche preemption model and Neutral
model. An empirical data set, the species abundance distribution for Collembola,
Mesostigmata and Oribatida found in Southwest of Canada was fitted by the above
alternative models and the best model was selected through model comparison. Some
simple methods for conducting model comparison have been referred in this chapter of
the book.
Keywords: Akaike information criteria, biodiversity metrics, Canada,
Collembola, ecological laws, Mesostigmata, mite ecology, model comparison and
selection, niche versus neutrality, Oribatida, species abundance and distribution,
species abundance distribution, statistical probability.
