EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Survival variability and population density in fish populations

Coilín Minto (), Ransom A. Myers and Wade Blanchard
Additional contact information
Coilín Minto: Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3H 4J1, Canada
Wade Blanchard: Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3H 3J5, Canada

Nature, 2008, vol. 452, issue 7185, 344-347

Abstract: Fish numbers: feel the noise Population sizes of insects, fish, birds and mammals vary greatly from year to year. This variability has often been seen as mere 'noise', an obstacle to unravelling the underlying abundance patterns. This has lead to divergent theories as to whether population growth will decrease at large numbers because of limited resources. Minto et al. adopt a novel approach to the problem by focusing on the very patterns of variability that were previously thought of as an obstacle. There should be patterns discernible in the variable data, the thinking goes, if populations are regulated according to their size. The assumption is supported by a study of a global database of fish species. The predictions relate to all population sizes and reveal, in particular, that variance continues to increase the lower the population size becomes. Focusing solely on the average numbers of a population will miss this fact, and increase the risk of numbers plummeting to extinction.

Date: 2008
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature06605 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:452:y:2008:i:7185:d:10.1038_nature06605

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/nature06605

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:452:y:2008:i:7185:d:10.1038_nature06605