Polymorphism Data Can Reveal the Origin of Species Abundance Statistics

What is the underlying mechanism behind the fat-tailed statistics observed for species abundance distributions? The two main hypotheses in the field are the adaptive (niche) theories, where species abundance reflects its fitness, and the neutral theory that assumes demographic stochasticity as the main factor determining community structure. Both explanations suggest quite similar species-abundance distributions, but very different histories: niche scenarios assume that a species population in the past was similar to the observed one, while neutral scenarios are characterized by strongly fluctuating populations. Since the genetic variations within a population depend on its abundance in the past, we present here a way to discriminate between the theories using the genetic diversity of noncoding DNA. A statistical test, based on the Fu-Li method, has been developed and enables such a differentiation. We have analyzed the results gathered from individual-based simulation of both types of histories and obtained clear distinction between the Fu-Li statistics of the neutral scenario and that of the niche scenario. Our results suggest that data for 10–50 species, with approximately 30 sequenced individuals for each species, may allow one to distinguish between these two theories.

[1]  Stephen P. Hubbell,et al.  Tree Dispersion, Abundance, and Diversity in a Tropical Dry Forest , 1979, Science.

[2]  Sidney Redner,et al.  A guide to first-passage processes , 2001 .

[3]  Stephen P. Hubbell,et al.  Beta-Diversity in Tropical Forest Trees , 2002, Science.

[4]  S. Nee.  The neutral theory of biodiversity: do the numbers add up? , 2005 .

[5]  Peter B. Adler,et al.  NEUTRAL MODELS FAIL TO REPRODUCE OBSERVED SPECIES–AREA AND SPECIES–TIME RELATIONSHIPS IN KANSAS GRASSLANDS , 2004 .

[6]  W. Li,et al.  Statistical tests of neutrality of mutations. , 1993, Genetics.

[7]  J. Timothy Wootton,et al.  Field parameterization and experimental test of the neutral theory of biodiversity , 2005, Nature.

[8]  G. Bell.  Neutral macroecology. , 2001, Science.

[9]  Susanna C. Manrubia,et al.  Genealogy in the era of genomics: Models of cultural and family traits reveal human homogeneity , 2003 .

[10]  H. Stanley,et al.  On the Size Distribution of Business Firms , 2008 .

[11]  R. May.  Patterns of species abundance and diversity , 1975 .

[12]  Salvador Pueyo,et al.  The maximum entropy formalism and the idiosyncratic theory of biodiversity , 2007, Ecology letters.

[13]  J. Wakeley.  Coalescent Theory: An Introduction , 2008 .

[14]  James J. Cai.  PGEToolbox: A Matlab toolbox for population genetics and evolution. , 2008, The Journal of heredity.

[15]  C. J-F,et al.  THE COALESCENT , 1980 .

[16]  V. Savage,et al.  Setting the absolute tempo of biodiversity dynamics. , 2007, Ecology letters.

[17]  P. Chesson.  Mechanisms of Maintenance of Species Diversity , 2000 .

[18]  Amos Maritan,et al.  Dynamical evolution of ecosystems , 2006, Nature.

[19]  Herbert Levine,et al.  Interfacial velocity corrections due to multiplicative noise , 1999 .

[20]  James Rosindell,et al.  Unified neutral theory of biodiversity and biogeography , 2010, Scholarpedia.

[21]  James S. Clark,et al.  Stability of forest biodiversity , 2003, Nature.

[22]  Rampal S Etienne,et al.  Confronting different models of community structure to species-abundance data: a Bayesian model comparison. , 2005, Ecology letters.

[23]  B. McGill.  A test of the unified neutral theory of biodiversity , 2003, Nature.

[24]  R. Macarthur,et al.  On the Relative Abundance of Species , 1960, The American Naturalist.

[25]  J. Stoyanov.  A Guide to First‐passage Processes , 2003 .

[26]  S. Hubbell,et al.  Neutral theory and relative species abundance in ecology , 2003, Nature.

[27]  S. Hubbell,et al.  The stability of forest biodiversity , 2004, Nature.

[28]  J. Kingman.  On the genealogy of large populations , 1982, Journal of Applied Probability.

[29]  R. Ricklefs.  The unified neutral theory of biodiversity: do the numbers add up? , 2006, Ecology.

[30]  Stephen M. Krone,et al.  On the Meaning and Existence of an Effective Population Size , 2005, Genetics.