A Revised Assessment of Species Redundancy and Ecosystem Reliability
Rastetter EB, Gough L, Hartley AE, Herbert DA, Nadelhoffer KJ, Williams M. 1999. A Revised Assessment of Species Redundancy and Ecosystem Reliability. Conservation Biology. 13(2):440-443
Naeem formalized the relationships among species diversity, functional groups, species redundancy, and ecosystem reliability. Although we applaud his efforts and agree with many of his conclusions, we disagree with some fundamental assumptions used in the derivation of Naeem's equation 2. These assumptions affect some of the conclusions concerning the role of redundancy. We discuss two possible interpretations of Naeem's equation. Under the first interpretation, the equation relates to the probability that a species is present at a particular time t. Under the second interpretation, the equation relates to the probability that a species is present at least once during the interval of time between time 0 and time t. Under this second interpretation we also disagree with the application of Naeem's equation 4.
- Type
- Journal Article
- Authors
- Rastetter, E; Gough, L; Hartley, A; Herbert, D; Nadelhoffer, K; Williams, M
- Units
- ARCN , BELA , CAKR , GAAR , KOVA , NOAT
- Keywords
- Arctic, Arctic LTER Site, Brooks Range Foothills, Conservation, Ecosystem stability, Species Composition, Toolik Lake