According to Alexander von Humboldt:
- Species richness decreases with increasing area of exploration
- Species richness increases with increasing area, but only up to limit
- There is no relationship between species richness and area explored.
- Species richness goes on increasing with increasing area of exploration
Solution
German naturalist and geographer Alexander von Humboldt while exploring the South American jungles, found that within a region species richness increased with increasing explored area but only up to a limit. The relationship between species richness and area turned out to be a rectangular hyperbola for a wide variety of organisms. The relationship is a straight line on a logarithmic scale.
Applying logarithm on both sides:
where,
= Species richness
= Area
= Slope of the line (regression coefficient)
= Y–intercept
Asked in: NEET 2020 (Phase 2)
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