Table 1.
Scaling relationship for abundance (N) and different measures of diversity for microbial and macrobial datasets
| Dataset | Rarity | Dominance | Evenness | Richness |
| EMP (n = 14,615) | 0.2 (0.30) | 1.01 (0.67) | −0.44 (0.42) | 0.46 (0.42) |
| MG-RAST (n = 1,283) | 0.06 (0.20) | 0.98 (0.97) | −0.17 (0.32) | 0.20 (0.45) |
| HMP (n = 4,303) | 0.14 (0.14) | 1.02 (0.70) | −0.33 (0.18) | 0.29 (0.13) |
| TARA (n = 139) | −0.26 (0.02) | 1.02 (0.13) | 0.06 (0.00) | 0.29 (0.13) |
| BBS (n = 2,769) | 0.16 (0.086) | 1.0 (0.54) | −0.32 (0.22) | 0.32 (0.19) |
| CBC (n = 1,412) | 0.16 (0.39) | 1.07 (0.90) | −0.35 (0.44) | 0.22 (0.48) |
| FIA (n = 10,355) | 0.07 (0.01) | 1.34 (0.68) | −0.45 (0.27) | 0.07 (0.02) |
| GENTRY (n = 222) | 0.46 (0.27) | 0.29 (0.038) | −0.19 (0.05) | 1.24 (0.46) |
| MCDB (n = 103) | 0.07 (0.07) | 1.07 (0.91) | −0.16 (0.20) | 0.09 (0.19) |
Values are scaling exponents; coefficients of determination (r2) are in parentheses. Datasets are the Earth Microbiome Project (EMP), the Argonne National Laboratory metagenomic server (MG-RAST) rRNA amplicon projects, the Human Microbiome Project (HMP), the Tara Oceans Expedition (TARA), the North American Breeding Bird Survey (BBS), the Christmas Bird Count (CBC), the Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA), the Gentry tree transects (GENTRY), and the Mammal Community Database (MCDB). TARA was the only dataset where N ranged over less than an order of magnitude, leading results for the TARA to be inconclusive. For most datasets, Nmax scaled almost isometrically with N. For all datasets except TARA, evenness decreased with N, while rarity increased. For birds and all microbe datasets, S scaled near the predicted range of 0.25–0.5.