Comment on "From Plant Traits to Plant Communities: A Statistical Mechanistic Approach to Biodiversity"

Date

2007

Authors

Roxburgh, Stephen H.
Mokany, Karel

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

American Association for the Advancement of Science

Abstract

Shipley et al. (Reports, 3 November 2006, p. 812) predicted plant community composition and relative abundances with a high level of accuracy by maximizing Shannon's index of information entropy (species diversity), subject to constraints on plant trait averages. We show that the entropy maximization assumption is relatively unimportant and that the high accuracy is due largely to a statistical effect.

Description

Keywords

Keywords: biodiversity; biological model; ecology; methodology; note; plant; plant physiology; population density; statistical model; Biodiversity; Ecology; Models, Biological; Models, Statistical; Plant Physiology; Plants; Population Density

Citation

Source

Science

Type

Journal article

Book Title

Entity type

Access Statement

License Rights

DOI

Restricted until

2037-12-31