@article{e3bea91856094452a970e7f27488bfca,
title = "Relationships between body size and abundance in ecology",
abstract = "Body size is perhaps the most fundamental property of an organism and is related to many biological traits, including abundance. The relationship between abundance and body size has been extensively studied in an attempt to quantify the form of the relationship and to understand the processes that generate it. However, progress has been impeded by the underappreciated fact that there are four distinct, but interrelated, relationships between size and abundance that are often confused in the literature. Here, we review and distinguish between these four patterns, and discuss the linkages between them. We argue that a synthetic understanding of size-abundance relationships will result from more detailed analyses of individual patterns and from careful consideration of how and why the patterns are related.",
author = "White, {Ethan P.} and Ernest, {S. K.Morgan} and Kerkhoff, {Andrew J.} and Enquist, {Brian J.}",
note = "Funding Information: We are grateful to John Damuth for influencing our thinking about the relationship between global and local size–density relationships. He, as well as Zach Long, Brian McGill, Sabrina Russo and two anonymous reviewers provided valuable comments on the article. We also thank Andrew Allen, Zach Long, Peter Morin, Scott Robinson, Sabrina Russo and John Terborgh for providing data for Figure 1 . Data were also used from the Forest Dynamics Plot of Barro Colorado Island (part of the Center for Tropical Forest Science), which were made possible through the support of NSF, the MacArthur Foundation and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, and through the work of over 100 people. Data collected by J. Halfpenny were provided by the NSF-supported Niwot Ridge LTER and the University of Colorado Mountain Research Station. E.P.W. was supported by an NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biological Informatics (DBI-0532847). Authorship is in order of contribution.",
year = "2007",
month = jun,
doi = "10.1016/j.tree.2007.03.007",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "22",
pages = "323--330",
journal = "Trends in Ecology and Evolution",
issn = "0169-5347",
publisher = "Elsevier Limited",
number = "6",
}