Biased-corrected richness estimates for the Amazonian tree flora

Abstract

Amazonian forests are extraordinarily diverse, but the estimated species richness is very much debated. Here, we apply an ensemble of parametric estimators and a novel technique that includes conspecific spatial aggregation to an extended database of forest plots with up-to-date taxonomy. We show that the species abundance distribution of Amazonia is best approximated by a logseries with aggregated individuals, where aggregation increases with rarity. By averaging several methods to estimate total richness, we confirm that over 15,000 tree species are expected to occur in Amazonia. We also show that using ten times the number of plots would result in an increase to just ~50% of those 15,000 estimated species. To get a more complete sample of all tree species, rigorous field campaigns may be needed but the number of trees in Amazonia will remain an estimate for years to come.

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Item Type:	Article
Authors/Creators:	ter Steege, H Prado, PI de Lima, RAF Pos, E de Souza Coelho, L de Andrade Lima Filho, D Salomão, RP Amaral, IL Dionízia de Almeida Matos, F Castilho, CV Phillips, OL https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8993-6168 Guevara, JE de Jesus Veiga Carim, M Cárdenas López, D Magnusson, WE Wittmann, F Pires Martins, M Sabatier, D Irume, MV da Silva Guimarães, JR Molino, J-F Bánki, OS Piedade, MTF Pitman, NCA Ramos, JF Monteagudo Mendoza, A Venticinque, EM Luize, BG Núñez Vargas, P Silva, TSF de Leão Novo, EMM Reis, NFC Terborgh, J Manzatto, AG Casula, KR Honorio Coronado, EN Montero, JC Duque, A Costa, FRC Castaño Arboleda, N Schöngart, J Zartman, CE Killeen, TJ Marimon, BS Marimon-Junior, BH Vasquez, R Mostacedo, B Demarchi, LO Feldpausch, TR Engel, J Petronelli, P Baraloto, C Assis, RL Castellanos, H Simon, MF de Medeiros, MB Quaresma, A Laurance, SGW Rincón, LM Andrade, A Sousa, TR Camargo, JL Schietti, J Laurance, WF de Queiroz, HL Nascimento, HEM Lopes, MA de Sousa Farias, E Magalhães, JLL Brienen, R https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5397-5755 Aymard C., GA Revilla, JDC Vieira, ICG Cintra, BBL Stevenson, PR Feitosa, YO Duivenvoorden, JF Mogollón, HF Araujo-Murakami, A Ferreira, LV Lozada, JR Comiskey, JA de Toledo, JJ Damasco, G Dávila, N Lopes, A García-Villacorta, R Draper, F Vicentini, A Cornejo Valverde, F Lloyd, J Gomes, VHF Neill, D Alonso, A Dallmeier, F de Souza, FC Gribel, R Arroyo, L Carvalho, FA de Aguiar, DPP do Amaral, DD Pansonato, MP Feeley, KJ Berenguer, E Fine, PVA Guedes, MC Barlow, J Ferreira, J Villa, B Peñuela Mora, MC Jimenez, EM Licona, JC Cerón, C Thomas, R Maas, P Silveira, M Henkel, TW Stropp, J Paredes, MR Dexter, KG Daly, D Baker, TR Huamantupa-Chuquimaco, I Milliken, W Pennington, T Tello, JS Pena, JLM Peres, CA Klitgaard, B Fuentes, A Silman, MR Di Fiore, A von Hildebrand, P Chave, J van Andel, TR Hilário, RR Phillips, JF Rivas-Torres, G Noronha, JC Prieto, A Gonzales, T de Sá Carpanedo, R Gonzales, GPG Gómez, RZ de Jesus Rodrigues, D Zent, EL Ruschel, AR Vos, VA Fonty, É Junqueira, AB Doza, HPD Hoffman, B Zent, S Barbosa, EM Malhi, Y de Matos Bonates, LC de Andrade Miranda, IP Silva, N Barbosa, FR Vela, CIA Pinto, LFM Rudas, A Albuquerque, BW Umaña, MN Carrero Márquez, YA van der Heijden, G Young, KR Tirado, M Correa, DF Sierra, R Costa, JBP Rocha, M Vilanova Torre, E Wang, O Oliveira, AA Kalamandeen, M Vriesendorp, C Ramirez-Angulo, H Holmgren, M Nascimento, MT Galbraith, D Flores, BM Scudeller, VV Cano, A Ahuite Reategui, MA Mesones, I Baider, C Mendoza, C Zagt, R Urrego Giraldo, LE Ferreira, C Villarroel, D Linares-Palomino, R Farfan-Rios, W Farfan-Rios, W Casas, LF Cárdenas, S Balslev, H Torres-Lezama, A Alexiades, MN Garcia-Cabrera, K Gamarra, LV Valderrama Sandoval, EH Ramirez Arevalo, F Hernandez, L Sampaio, AF Pansini, S Palacios Cuenca, W de Oliveira, EA Pauletto, D Levesley, A Melgaço, K Pickavance, G
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information:	© The Author(s) 2020. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Keywords:	Community ecology; Theoretical ecology
Dates:	Accepted: 18 June 2020 Published (online): 23 June 2020 Published: 23 June 2020
Institution:	The University of Leeds
Academic Units:	The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Geography (Leeds) > Ecology & Global Change (Leeds)
Depositing User:	Symplectic Publications
Date Deposited:	07 Jul 2020 11:27
Last Modified:	25 Jun 2023 22:20
Status:	Published
Publisher:	Nature Research
Identification Number:	10.1038/s41598-020-66686-3
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID):	oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:162770

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Biased-corrected richness estimates for the Amazonian tree flora

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