Use of cover data to model species abundance distributions through continuous probability functions

Species abundance distribution (SAD) models describe the abundances of the species within ecological communities. SAD modelling has been developed using frequency distributions that require the use of count data (number of individuals). However, many organisms, such as most plants, cannot be counted. Instead, abundance is estimated using cover values. We show here how SAD approaches conceived for modelling frequency distributions based on counts can be modified to deal with continuous distributions and provide an application using relative plant cover as a continuous measure of abundance. We applied several SAD models using continuous probability functions to investigate how plant SADs changed along a wide (2,500 m) elevational gradient in the Alborz Mountains (Iran). We found that most communities were adequately fitted by the Weibull distribution, whose parameters changed along the gradient in response to the interplay between biotic and environmental filtering processes. The use of continuous probability functions in SAD modelling should be encouraged in research dealing with plant communities and other organisms for which counting individuals is theoretically or practically impossible.