Relative resource abundance explains butterfly biodiversity in island communities.

ABSTRACT: Ecologists have long been intrigued by the factors that control the pattern of biodiversity, i.e., the distribution and abundance of species. Previous studies have demonstrated that coexisting species partition their resources and/or that the compositional similarity between communities is determined by environmental factors, lending support to the niche-assembly model. However, no attempt has been made to test whether the relative amount of resources that reflects relative niche space controls relative species abundance in communities. Here, we demonstrate that the relative abundance of butterfly species in island communities is significantly related to the relative biomasses of their host plants but not to the geographic distance between communities. In the studied communities, the bioma

SUBMITTER: Yamamoto N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1888573 | biostudies-literature | 2007 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature