Cooperative Wildlife Research Laboratory, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL, 62901, USA.
Laboratoire de Biométrie Et Biologie Evolutive, Univ Lyon, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, CNRS, 69100, Villeurbanne, France.
Sci Rep. 2020 Sep 9;10(1):14814. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-71725-0.
Power laws are cornerstone relationships in ecology and evolutionary biology. The density-mass allometry (DMA), which predicts an allometric scaling of population abundance, and Taylor's law (TL), which predicts a decrease in the population abundance variation along with a decrease in population density, have enhanced our knowledge of inter- and intra-specific variation in population abundance. When combined, these two power laws led to the variance-mass allometry (VMA), which states that larger species have lower spatial variation in population density than smaller species. The VMA has been predicted through theoretical models, however few studies have investigated if this law is also supported by empirical data. Here, to formally test the VMA, we have used the population density estimates obtained through worldwide camera trapping studies for an emblematic and ecologically important carnivorous taxa, the Felidae family. Our results showed that the VMA law hold in felids, as well as the TL and the DMA laws; bigger cat species showed less variation for the population density than smaller species. These results have important implications for the conservation of wildlife population and confirm the validity of important ecological concepts, like the allometric scaling of population growth rate and the slow-fast continuum of life history strategies.
幂律是生态学和进化生物学中的基石关系。密度-质量幂律（DMA）预测了种群丰度的一种分形标度，而泰勒定律（TL）则预测了随着种群密度的降低，种群丰度变化的减少，这增强了我们对种群丰度的种间和种内变异的认识。当这两种幂律结合在一起时，就产生了方差-质量幂律（VMA），它指出较大的物种的种群密度空间变异性比较小的物种低。VMA 已经通过理论模型进行了预测，但是很少有研究调查该定律是否也得到了经验数据的支持。在这里，为了正式检验 VMA，我们使用了通过全球范围的相机陷阱研究获得的标志性和生态重要的肉食性分类群——猫科动物的种群密度估计值。我们的结果表明，VMA 定律在猫科动物中成立，TL 和 DMA 定律也成立；较大的猫科动物的种群密度变化比较小的物种小。这些结果对野生动物种群的保护具有重要意义，并证实了重要的生态概念的有效性，如种群增长率的分形标度和生命史策略的快慢连续体。
