Comment on "A keystone mutualism drives pattern in a power function"

Salvador Pueyo; Roger Jovani

doi:10.1126/science.1129595

Comment on "A keystone mutualism drives pattern in a power function"

Science. 2006 Sep 22;313(5794):1739; author reply 1739. doi: 10.1126/science.1129595.

Authors

Salvador Pueyo¹, Roger Jovani

Affiliation

¹ Departament d'Ecologia, Universitat de Barcelona, Avinguda Diagonal 645, 08028 Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. spueyo@ub.edu

PMID: 16990535
DOI: 10.1126/science.1129595

Abstract

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.

Publication types

Comment
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Animals
Ants / physiology*
Coffea*
Ecosystem*
Hemiptera / parasitology
Hemiptera / physiology*
Mathematics
Models, Biological
Population Density
Symbiosis*