Bell Graham
Redpath Museum and Biology Department, McGill University, Montreal, Québec, H3A 1B1 Canada.
Proc Biol Sci. 2003 Dec 22;270(1533):2531-42. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2003.2550.
Biological surveys provide the raw material for assembling ecological patterns. These include the properties of parameters such as range, abundance, dispersion, evenness and diversity; the relationships between these parameters; the relationship between geographical distributions and landscape structure; and the co-occurrence of species. These patterns have often been used in the past to evaluate the role of ecological processes in structuring natural communities. In this paper, I investigate the patterns produced by simple neutral community models (NCMs) and compare them with the output of systematic biological surveys. The NCM generates qualitatively, and in some cases quantitatively, the same patterns as the survey data. It therefore provides a satisfactory general theory of diversity and distribution, although what patterns can be used to distinguish neutral from adaptationist interpretations of communities, or even whether such patterns exist, remains unclear.
生物调查为构建生态模式提供了原始材料。这些材料包括诸如范围、丰度、离散度、均匀度和多样性等参数的属性；这些参数之间的关系；地理分布与景观结构之间的关系；以及物种的共现情况。过去，这些模式常被用于评估生态过程在构建自然群落中的作用。在本文中，我研究了简单中性群落模型（NCMs）产生的模式，并将其与系统生物调查的结果进行比较。NCM在定性上，在某些情况下在定量上，产生与调查数据相同的模式。因此，它提供了一个关于多样性和分布的令人满意的一般理论，尽管哪些模式可用于区分群落的中性解释和适应主义解释，甚至这些模式是否存在仍不清楚。
