The role of niche overlap, environmental heterogeneity, landscape roughness and productivity in shaping species abundance distributions along the Amazon-Andes gradient

摘要

AimStatistical and ecological mechanisms shape species abundance distributions (SADs). A lack of correlation between ecological gradients and SAD shape would suggest that SADs are caused by purely statistical reasons. We evaluated the variation in the shape of SADs for communities in landscapes of differing variable connectivity, environmental heterogeneity, species niches overlap and productivity.