Comment on "A keystone mutualism drives pattern in a power function".
Vandermeer and Perfecto (Reports, 17 February 2006, p. 1000) maintain that a mutualist ant disrupts the power law distribution of scale insect abundances. However, reanalysis of the data reveals that ants cause an increase in the range of the power law and modify its exponent. We present a tentative, but more realistic, model that is suitable for quantitative predictions.
Pueyo
Salvador
S
Departament d'Ecologia, Universitat de Barcelona, Avinguda Diagonal 645, 08028 Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. spueyo@ub.edu
Jovani
Roger
R
D000818:Animals; D001000:Ants / Q000502:physiology*; D040503:Coffea; D017753:Ecosystem; D006430:Hemiptera / Q000469:parasitology / Q000502:physiology*; D008433:Mathematics; D008954:Models, Biological; D011156:Population Density; D013559:Symbiosis