Species–area relationships at small scales in continuum vegetation

Species-area relationships (SARs) are well known to be variable, particularly at the left hand end, i.e. at small areas with low numbers of species (Williamson et al. 2002).Here I show that some of this variability is a consequence of the way that species are recorded.The relationship is, here, always presented in a standard way, i.e. on logarithmic axes, of log species vs. log area.The axes are in homogeneous measure, making statements about slopes simpler.The slopes will be referred to, again in the standard way, as z .