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Xiongwen Chen

  • Biodiversity Journal, 8 (3): 833-838

    Xiongwen Chen
    Patterns of family-species distribution for organisms in Alabama, USA

    ABSTRACT
    Biodiversity provides multiple functions to human society. Understanding the emergent properties of biodiversity in one region is important for better conservation and strategy developing. In this study, organisms of different groups (fishes, amphibians and reptiles, mammals, butterflies and plants) in Alabama were studied by methods of family-species number distribution and entropy. The results indicate that the family-species distribution of each organism group in Alabama follows a power law, but the power exponent varies among groups. There is no significant difference for the power exponents among the groups of fishes, mammals and plants, also between amphibians and reptiles and birds. The power exponent of butterflies is quite different with others. For global birds, the power exponent is significantly different with the birds group and others in Alabama. The entropy of family-species distribution is only about half of maximum entropy within each group or overall. The implications for biodiversity conservation and strategy making are discussed. Characterizing the family-species distribution at different scales will provide a quantitative approach for comparing and evaluating hierarchical properties of biodiversity.

  • Biodiversity Journal, 7 (1): 025-032

    Xiongwen Chen & Tuo Feng
    Patterns of Butterfly distribution in Alabama, USA (Lepidoptera)

    ABSTRACT
    Butterflies (Lepidoptera) are an iconic group of insects and are emphasized in ecological research and biodiversity conservation due to the role in ecological processes. Alabama (USA) has 139 species of butterflies in 6 families based on the previous field surveys. In this study the information from the previous field survey was analyzed with environmental information for the general patterns across 67 counties of Alabama. The results indicate that the counties with the higher butterfly species are mainly within the metropolitan areas; power-law relationship exists between average species number and occupied county number; there is higher number of butterfly species at counties with either the highest or the lowest forest coverage; there is positive correlation between latitude and butterfly species density; counties with the lowest or the highest species number usually have higher standard deviations in annual air temperature or precipitation; butterflies with a big distribution area do not have significantly bigger wing size in comparison to ones with a small distribution area; and with the increase of latitude, the average wing size of butterflies increases. The results provide new understanding for the butterfly distribution at a regional level.