Ecology 6th Edition by Manuel Molles

Exercise 9

Suppose you are a biologist working for an international conservation organization concerned with studying and conserving biological diversity. On one of your assignments you are sent out to explore the local biotas of several regions. As part of your survey work you are to take large quantitative samples of the copepods of the North Atlantic, the butterflies of central New Guinea, and the ground-dwelling beetles of southwest Africa. Using the lognormal distribution, predict the patterns of relative abundance of species you expect to see within each of these groups of organisms.