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Evolved consequences of rarity

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The Biology of Rarity

Part of the book series: Population and Community Biology Series ((PCBS,volume 17))

Abstract

Rarity is common and widespread. As early as 1859 Charles Darwin wrote that ‘rarity is the attribute of a vast number of species in all classes, in all countries’. All species are rare somewhere, and most species are rare toward the periphery of their ranges (Hanski, 1982; Brown, 1984; Hanski et al., 1993). The majority of species comprising local biotas are rare (Preston, 1948; Hubbell, 1979). Indeed, the rarity of most species gave rise to a major school of ecological thought, which asserted that populations were typically regulated by density-independent factors acting at low population densities rather than by density-dependent factors, such as competition, whose effects should be most strongly felt at high population densities (Andrewartha and Birch, 1954).

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Authors
  1. Gordon H. Orians
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK

    William E. Kunin (Lecturer in Ecology) (Lecturer in Ecology)

  2. Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, S10 2TN, UK

    Kevin J. Gaston (Royal Society University Research Fellow) (Royal Society University Research Fellow)

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© 1997 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

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Orians, G.H. (1997). Evolved consequences of rarity. In: Kunin, W.E., Gaston, K.J. (eds) The Biology of Rarity. Population and Community Biology Series, vol 17. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-5874-9_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-5874-9_11

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-94-010-6483-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-011-5874-9

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