Nakagawa Shinichi, Cornwell William K, Callaghan Corey T
Evolution & Ecology Research Centre, Centre for Ecosystem Science, and School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.
Theoretical Sciences Visiting Program, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University, Onna, Japan.
Elife. 2025 May 28;13:RP95857. doi: 10.7554/eLife.95857.
In macroecology, a classic empirical observation has been positive relationships between local abundance and species' range, known as the abundance-occupancy relationships (AORs). The existence of this empirical relationship has informed both theory development and applied questions. Notably, the spatial neutral model of biodiversity predicts AORs. Yet, based on the largest known meta-analysis of 16,562,995 correlations from ~3 billion bird observations, this relationship was indistinguishable from zero. Further, in a phylogenetic comparative analysis, species range had no predictive power over the global mean abundance of 7464 bird species. We suggest that publication and confirmation biases may have created AORs, an illusion of a 'universal' pattern. This nullification highlights the need for ecologists to instigate a credibility revolution like psychology, where many classic phenomena have been nullified.
在宏观生态学中，一个经典的实证观察结果是，局部丰度与物种分布范围之间存在正相关关系，即所谓的丰度-占有率关系（AORs）。这种实证关系的存在为理论发展和应用问题提供了依据。值得注意的是，生物多样性的空间中性模型预测了AORs。然而，基于对约30亿次鸟类观测得到的16562995个相关性进行的已知最大规模的元分析，这种关系与零并无差异。此外，在系统发育比较分析中，物种分布范围对7464种鸟类的全球平均丰度没有预测能力。我们认为，发表和确认偏差可能造成了AORs，即一种“普遍”模式的假象。这种无效化凸显了生态学家需要像心理学领域那样掀起一场可信度革命，在心理学领域，许多经典现象已被证伪。
