Species accumulation functions and pure birth processes

✍ Scribed by L.G. Gorostiza; E. Dı́az-Francés

• Book ID: 104301763
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2001
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 81 KB
• Volume: 55
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0167-7152
• DOI: 10.1016/s0167-7152(01)00148-1

✦ Synopsis

Many authors in Ecology, following Soberà on and Llorente (Conserv. Biol. 7(3) (1993) 480), model species accumulation functions as means of pure birth processes. Their approach has inconsistencies, but we show that it can be justiÿed as an approximation, in the sense that given a species accumulation function S(t) of a proposed type, there exists a non-homogeneous pure birth process (PBP) whose mean is close to S(t). The variance of the PBP is basic for statistical inference and model assessment, but it is not known. We provide an upper bound for the variance that can be used in its place.