title: Species abundance distribution and population dynamics in a two-community model of neutral ecology.
abstract: Explicit formulas for the steady-state distribution of species in two interconnected communities of arbitrary sizes are derived in the framework of Hubbell's neutral model of biodiversity. Migrations of seeds from both communities as well as mutations in both of them are taken into account. These results generalize those previously obtained for the "island-continent" model and they allow an analysis of the influence of the ratio of the sizes of the two communities on the dominance/diversity equilibrium. Exact expressions for species abundance distributions are deduced from a master equation for the joint probability distribution of species in the two communities. Moreover, an approximate self-consistent solution is derived. It corresponds to a generalization of previous results and it proves to be accurate over a broad range of parameters. The dynamical correlations between the abundances of a species in both communities are also discussed.
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Spectrométrie Physique, UMR 5588 CNRS, Université Joseph Fourier, Boîte Postale 87, 38402, Saint Martin d'Hères Cedex, France.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Vallade
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Houchmandzadeh
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D005075:Biological Evolution; D003198:Computer Simulation; D017753:Ecosystem; D004641:Emigration and Immigration; D006801:Humans; D008954:Models, Biological; D011156:Population Density; D011157:Population Dynamics; D012111:Residence Characteristics