Effects of occupancy estimation on abundance-occupancy relationships.

ABSTRACT: Abundance-occupancy relationships predict that species that occupy more sites are also more locally abundant, where occupancy is usually estimated following the assumption that species can occupy all sampled sites. Here we use the National Ecological Observatory Network small-mammal data to assess whether this assumption affects abundance-occupancy relationships. We estimated occupancy considering all sampled sites (traditional occupancy) and only the sites found within the species geographic range (spatial occupancy) and realized environmental niche (environmental occupancy). We found that when occupancy was estimated considering only sites possible for the species to colonize (spatial and environmental occupancy) weaker abundance-occupancy relationships were observed. This shows that the

SUBMITTER: Ten Caten C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9174727 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature