On the inference of positive and negative species associations and their relation to abundance
Rominger, A. J.
Show abstract
The prevalence of rare species in ecosystems begs the question of how they persist. In a recent paper, Calatayuda et al. (CEA) provided a new hypothesis that rare species, in contrast to common species, share unique microhabitats and/or preferentially engage in mutualistic interactions. CEA support this hypotheses by reconstructing association networks from spatially replicated abundance data finding that rare species are over-representing in positive association networks while common species are over-representing in negative association networks. However, the use of abundance and co-occurrence data to infer true species associations is difficult and often inaccurate. Here, I show that the finding of rare species being more represented in positive association networks can be explained by statistical artifacts in the inference of species associations from abundance data. I caution against the inference of ecological association networks from abundance data alone.
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