Fig. 4.

Temporal variation in stochasticity and biodiversity in disturbed habitats. (A) An environmental disturbance that decreases carrying capacity may cause a community to shift from the niche phase to the neutral phase. (B) A community with a high carrying capacity (K = 1.0: blue) has a less skewed species abundance distribution than a community with a low carrying capacity (K = 0.1: red), as shown by the steeper red curve in the rank-abundance plot obtained from LV simulations. Simulations were run with μ = 1.0, σ = 0.5, λ = 0.02, and ω = 0.6. (C) Similarly, rank-abundance plots of butterfly species in a tropical Indonesian forest before (blue) and after (red) logging reflect an increase in skewness of the species abundance distribution following the disturbance (32).