Rank abundance curve

A rank abundance curve, also called a Whittaker plot, is a chart ecologists use to display the relative abundance of species within a community, a key component of biodiversity. It plots species in order of abundance rank on one axis, from the single most abundant species down to the rarest, against relative abundance, usually on a logarithmic scale, on the other, allowing ecologists to read off species richness, the total number of species present, and species evenness, how evenly individuals are distributed among those species, from the shape of the curve. Because it shows the full pattern of abundance across every species in a community rather than compressing it into one number, a rank abundance curve reveals the relative role that different variables play in shaping diversity, in a way that a single summary biodiversity index cannot. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/