Is it possible to use rank abundance plots to determine ecosystem stability?
A steady state result may be explained diagrammatically. However, a diagram of something in the transient state can not determine the underlying steady state pattern.
The answer is "Yes!" However, one must be careful in interpreting the rank abundance plots and in considering what they represent ecologically.
Rank abundance plots are often presented as log-normal. Sugihara's niche hierarchy and sequential break models provide good evidence that rank abundance is an out come of competitive interactions with ecologically functional groups. Sugihara used the term taxocenes, but that is not quite right. Thus, the log-normal relationship between diversity and abundance is not a simple outcome of the central limit theorem, as May and others have argued. It has its foundations in the ideas of competitive exclusion, niche hierarchy, and ecosystem dynamics.
That said, and coming back to the idea of taxocene, one must beware that the assemblage (not necessarily a taxocene) being considered must have some internal similarities in ecosystem function and must be complete in that regard. The idea that one can use the rank abundance relationship to consider ecosystem stability is too simplistic as the other respondents have indicated by invoking dynamicism as part of the consideration. Thus, one may have a log-normal relationship between diversity and abundance in an ecologically functional assemblage (not a taxocene nor a guild), but the individual species' abundances may change: the play is the same but the actors different.
We have used the idea of log-normality as an indicator of ecosystem health (i.e. in some sense also considered under stability) and papers by Kevan et al. (J. appl. Ecol. on blueberry pollinator assemblages), the basis for measuring ecosystem health (Kevan, Belaoussoff a couple of papers), and the problems of the taxocene issue by Bellaoussoff et al. on ground beetles in agricultural and other systems). Some of those papers are available through Researchgate.
Cheers, Peter
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