• Welcome to BirdForum, the internet's largest birding community with thousands of members from all over the world. The forums are dedicated to wild birds, birding, binoculars and equipment and all that goes with it.

    Please register for an account to take part in the discussions in the forum, post your pictures in the gallery and more.
ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

Search results

thxpress_search_the_forum Search Opus
  1. T

    Most plant species per square metre

    The statements you find in many guides and older text books do tend to be simplistic. Certainly the issue of unequal relatedness is a relatively new thing (turn of the century). They also often mix apples and pears—species richness, species density or..., may cherry-pick unintentionally ("table...
  2. T

    Most plant species per square metre

    These things are inevitably somewhat arbitrary. There are few areas or habitats where the edges are well defined. For example, exactly where does any city in the UK start and finish..? Where does an estuary or sand dunes begin and end (precisely)? The fact that geography is fractal adds to these...
  3. T

    Most plant species per square metre

    The other issue is what we mean by "diversity". Species richness might not be (probably isn't) a sensible measure. Phylogenetic diversity likely is. In that case, cape probably still wins even though there are so many ericas because you've also got cycads, proteas etc. It will certainly beat...
  4. T

    Most plant species per square metre

    Yes but what is the area over which you make the measurement. Density per m averaged over Kew gardens is going to be higher than density averaged over the whole of Richmond park. There's one value averaged over the earth as a whole, but an infinity of different values (bounded at 0) over all...
  5. T

    Most plant species per square metre

    Should have said, it's obvious, really, but everything in ecology has an attached scale. Change scale and you're comparing apples and pears. So in the Amazon alpha Diversity (that in one place) is very high but beta Diversity (how Diversity changes over wide areas) is much lower as many species...
  6. T

    Most plant species per square metre

    It's commonly held to be true. It's unlikely to certain, though, given that many rich areas of the world remain +/- unsurveyed.. Obviously you have huge species densities in places like the Amazon. The explanation is that the climate of that tiny corner has remained stable for a very long time...
Back
Top