Figure 2.

Commonness and rarity patterns reported by Rabinowitz et al. (1986) for species in the British flora (Panel A) and by Pitman et al. (1999) for Manu National Park in Amazonian Peru (Panel B), compared using the qualitative classification scheme of eight forms of rarity proposed by Rabinowitz et al. Rabinowitz et al. reported that 15% of surveyed British plant species had small geographic ranges, but Pitman et al. reported no Manu species in this category. Note that there is a difference in the two methods because Pitman et al. were not able to assess whether local population sizes were “somewhere large” versus “everywhere small” as did Rabinowitz et al., who had complete and relatively detailed range maps of British plant species.