Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience of our site the best it can be.

Science 8 June 2007:
Vol. 316. no. 5830, p. 1425
DOI: 10.1126/science.1140190
Prev | Table of Contents | Next

Technical Comments

Comment on "From Plant Traits to Plant Communities: A Statistical Mechanistic Approach to Biodiversity"

Christian O. Marks* and Helene C. Muller-Landau

Shipley et al. (Reports, 3 November 2006, p. 812) predicted plant community composition and relative abundances with a high level of accuracy by maximizing Shannon's index of information entropy (species diversity), subject to constraints on plant trait averages. We show that the entropy maximization assumption is relatively unimportant and that the high accuracy is due largely to a statistical effect.

Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, University of Minnesota, 1987 Upper Buford Circle, St. Paul, MN 55108, USA.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: marks071{at}umn.edu

Read the Full Text

To Advertise     Find Products

Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)