Common and rare species distributions between taxa

What is it about?

Species richness patterns are built from the distributions of individual species. We correlate species richness patterns from three UK marine taxa, contrasting common and rare species (defined by range size) and their tendency for congruence in their spatial patterns. We show robustly that common species are highly congruent between taxa.

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Why is it important?

The findings are important for fundamanetal and applied ecology. In any ecological dataset, common species tend to be the most accurately and easily recorded and therefore may be most useful for conservation (e.g. 'citizen science' projects). Our findings suggest that common species from one (or a few) taxa can predict the distribution of those from other taxa, and furthermore may underlie taxonomic surrogacy relationships.