Arnost Sizling

• Charles University in Prague

Aim A large number of indices that compare two or more assemblages have been proposed or reinvented. The interpretation of the indices varies across the literature, despite efforts for clarification and unification. Most of the effort has focused on interdependence between the indices and the mathematics behind them. At the same time, following iss...

The species–area relationship (SAR) describes a range of related phenomena that are fundamental to the study of biogeography, macroecology and community ecology. While the subject of ongoing debate for a century, surprisingly, no previous book has focused specifically on the SAR. This volume addresses this shortfall by providing a synthesis of the...

The species–area relationship (SAR) describes a range of related phenomena that are fundamental to the study of biogeography, macroecology and community ecology. While the subject of ongoing debate for a century, surprisingly, no previous book has focused specifically on the SAR. This volume addresses this shortfall by providing a synthesis of the...

Diversity patterns of forest snail assemblages have been studied mainly in Europe. Siberian snail faunas have different evolutionary history and colonization dynamics than European faunas, but studies of forest snail diversity are almost missing from Siberia. Therefore, we collected snails at 173 forest sites in the Russian Altai and adjacent areas...

Sometimes, we stumble over literature revealing that well-known and groundbreaking theories have previously been proposed by earlier researchers. Going back to the 1920s and a group of Nordic botanists, we discovered that they had already accomplished much of what theoretical ecologists and biographers, especially Americans, did half a century late...

The challenge of biodiversity upscaling, estimating the species richness of a large area from scattered local surveys within it, has attracted increasing interest in recent years, producing a wide range of competing approaches. Such methods, if successful, could have important applications to multi-scale biodiversity estimation and monitoring. Here...

The challenge of biodiversity upscaling, estimating the species richness of a large area from scattered local surveys within it, has attracted increasing interest in recent years, producing a wide range of competing approaches. Such methods, if successful, could have important applications to multi-scale biodiversity estimation and monitoring. Here...

Each epoch has given rise to groundbreaking theories, though sometimes we stumble over literature revealing somebody else has already proposed them much earlier. The early age of theoretical and geographical ecology was pioneered chiefly by Europeans, but with the rise of systems ecology and theoretical ecology in the 1960s and 70s, the Americans...

Whether β-diversity is independent of scale, meaning irrespective of the size of the areas surveyed, is often discussed. Here we link the common indices of β-diversity to the species-area relationship (SAR), in order to examine under which conditions β-diversity is scale invariant. Both the species-area relationship (SAR) and β-diversity indices...

Up-scaling species richness from local to continental scales is an unsolved problem of macroecology. Macroecologists hope that proper up-scaling can uncover the hidden rules that underlie spatial patterns in species richness, but a machinery to up-scale species richness also has a purely practical side at the scales and for the habitats where direc...

Aim Projections of human impact on the environment and biodiversity patterns are crucial if we are to prevent their destruction. Such projections usually involve the assumption that the same human activities always affect biodiversity in the same way, either in geographically distant areas within the same time‐scale or in the same areas in differen...

In the autumn of 2014, we conducted a malacological survey at 23 freshwater bodies in the Danubian lowland, SW Slovakia. We aimed to conduct a malacological inventory of semi-natural sites of a high conservation value. During the fieldwork, we used conventional methods of sampling; mostly sweeping by a hemispherical metal kitchen strainer from both...

Systemizing measures that compare species compositions in areas and linking them to spatial phenomena.

A

Studies of plant invasions rarely address impacts on molluscs. By comparing pairs of invaded and corresponding uninvaded plots in 96 sites in floodplain forests, we examined effects of four invasive alien plants (Impatiens glandulifera, Fallopia japonica, F. sachalinensis, and F.×bohemica) in the Czech Republic on communities of land snails. The ri...

Background/Question/Methods The species-area relationship (SAR) is one of a few general patterns in ecology, yet the universality of its shape and slope has been questioned. Using geometrical considerations and analysis of various data on nested SARs from all available spatial scales, I will explore constraints which are imposed upon the shape an...

Recent major environmental changes could lead to homogenization in the composition of plant and animal communities, with generalist species replacing more specialized species, as well as to the increased domination of species adapted to warmer climatic conditions. Using common bird monitoring data, we have tested whether these patterns can be obser...

Escape enables prey to avoid an approaching predator. The escape decision-making process has traditionally been interpreted using theoretical models that consider ultimate explanations based on the cost/benefit paradigm. Ultimate approaches, however, suffer from inseparable extra-assumptions due to an inability to accurately parameterize the model'...

Software. (EXE)

Results for artificially deformed data. (A) Observed (squares) and modeled (solid line) relationships between nest vegetation concealment and differences between the two types of FIDs (direct minus tangential approach). (B) Particular FID/vegetation concealment relationships for tangential (observed = empty squares, modeled = dashed line) and direc...

Software manual. (DOC)

Derivation of eq 1 . (DOC)

Dataset. (XLS)

The species-area relationship (SAR) is considered to be one of a few generalities in ecology, yet a universal model of its shape and slope has remained elusive. Recently, Harte et al. argued that the slope of the SAR for a given area is driven by a single parameter, the ratio between total number of individuals and number of species (i.e., the mean...

The distribution of species abundances within an ecological community provides a window into ecological processes and has important applications in conservation biology as an indicator of disturbance. Previous work indicates that species abundance distributions might be independent of the scales at which they are measured which has implications for...

The most pervasive species-richness pattern, the latitudinal gradient of diversity, has been related to Rapoport's rule, i.e., decreasing latitudinal extent of species' ranges toward the equator. According to this theory, species can have narrower tolerances in more stable climates, leading to smaller ranges and allowing coexistence of more species...

Common species have a greater effect on observed geographical patterns of species richness than do rare ones. Here we present a theory of the relationship between individual species occurrence patterns and patterns in species richness, which allows purely geometrical and statistical causes to be distinguished from biological ones. Relationships bet...

The frequency distribution of species abundances [the species abundance distribution (SAD)] is considered to be a fundamental characteristic of community structure. It is almost invariably strongly right-skewed, with most species being rare. There has been much debate as to its exact properties and the processes from which it results. Here, we cont...

Summary • The objective of this study was to test the theoretical prediction that the thermal tolerance range for development in insects should be about 20 °C. • The data on the thermal requirements for development of 66 species from eight orders of insects was obtained from the literature. The temperatures at which the developmental rates are at t...

One of the most frequently studied pattern in ecology is the Species Abundance Distribution (SAD) that represents the frequency distribution of species abundances in an assemblage. Two main approaches to displaying such information have been employed: histograms constructed using exponentially increasing bin widths as pioneered by Preston (1948), a...

Diversity patterns cannot be properly interpreted without a theory providing criteria for their evaluation. We propose a concept to prevent artifictions caused by improper consideration of changes in observed patterns due to variation in taxon delimitation. Most biodiversity patterns concern assemblages of species of given higher taxon (e.g. class)...

There have been several attempts to build a unified framework for macroecological patterns. However, these have mostly been based either on questionable assumptions or have had to be parameterized to obtain realistic predictions. Here, we propose a new model explicitly considering patterns of aggregated species distributions on multiple spatial sca...

Many attempts to explain the species-abundance distribution (SAD) assume that it has a universal functional form which applies to most assemblages. However, if such a form does exist, then it has to be invariant under changes in the area of the study plot (the addition of neighboring areas or subdivision of the original area) and changes in taxonom...

We know that there are tens of millions of plant and animal species, but we do not know enough to be able to describe the patterns and processes that characterise the distribution of species in space, time and taxonomic groups. Given that in practical terms it is impossible to expect to be able to document biodiversity with any degree of completene...

We know that there are tens of millions of plant and animal species, but we do not know enough to be able to describe the patterns and processes that characterise the distribution of species in space, time and taxonomic groups. Given that in practical terms it is impossible to expect to be able to document biodiversity with any degree of completene...

The species–area relationship (SAR) is often expressed as a power law, which indicates scale invariance. It has been claimed that the scale invariance – or self-similarity at the community level – is not compatible with the self-similarity at the level of spatial distribution of individual species, because the power law would only emerge if distrib...

The frequency distribution of species’ area of occupancy is often bimodal, most species being either very rare or very common in terms of number of occupied sites. This pattern has been attributed to the nonlinearity associated with metapopulation dynamics of the species, but there are also other explanations comprising sampling artifact and freque...