The animal species-body size distribution of Marion Island

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dc.contributor.authorGaston K.J.
dc.contributor.authorChown S.L.
dc.contributor.authorMercer R.D.
dc.date.accessioned2011-05-15T16:02:20Z
dc.date.available2011-05-15T16:02:20Z
dc.date.issued2001
dc.description.abstractBody size is one of the most significant features of animals. Not only is it correlated with many life history and ecological traits, but it also may influence the abundance of species within, and their membership of, assemblages. Understanding of the latter processes is frequently based on a comparison of model outcomes with the frequency of species of different body mass within natural assemblages. Consequently, the form of these frequency distributions has been much debated. Empirical data usually concern taxonomically delineated groups, such as classes or orders, whereas the processes ultimately apply to whole assemblages. Here, we report the most complete animal species-body size distribution to date for those free-living species breeding on sub-Antarctic Marion Island and using the terrestrial environment. Extending over 15 orders of magnitude of variation in body mass, this distribution is bimodal, with separate peaks for invertebrates and vertebrates. Under logarithmic transformation, the distribution for vertebrates is not significantly skewed, whereas that for invertebrates is right-skewed. Contrary to expectation based on a fractal or pseudo fractal environmental structure, the decline in the richness of species at the smallest body sizes is a real effect and not a consequence of unrecorded species or of species introductions to the island. The scarcity of small species might well be a consequence of their large geographic ranges.
dc.description.versionArticle
dc.identifier.citationProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
dc.identifier.citation98
dc.identifier.citation25
dc.identifier.issn278424
dc.identifier.other10.1073/pnas.251332098
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/12422
dc.subjectAntarctica
dc.subjectarticle
dc.subjectbody mass
dc.subjectbody size
dc.subjectbreeding
dc.subjectCanada
dc.subjectfauna
dc.subjectnonhuman
dc.subjectpriority journal
dc.subjectspecies differentiation
dc.subjectAnimals
dc.subjectAntarctic Regions
dc.subjectBiometry
dc.subjectBody Constitution
dc.subjectEcosystem
dc.subjectInvertebrates
dc.subjectModels, Biological
dc.subjectSpecies Specificity
dc.subjectVertebrates
dc.titleThe animal species-body size distribution of Marion Island
dc.typeArticle
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