Randomly select a subset of an ecosystem

Return an ecosystem comprised of individuals randomly sampled from a metacommunity

Usage

isolate(a, size = no.of.ind(a), replace = TRUE)

Arguments

a: Ecosystem data
size: Number of individuals to sample
replace: Boolean, with default TRUE meaning to sample individuals from the metacommunity with replacement and FALSE meaning to sample without replacement. See details section

Details

Setting argument replace to default TRUE is much faster.

The canonical example is given by Leigh et al 1993, in which islands were isolated from the mainland by rising waters. The trees on the islands were held to be a randomly drawn sample from the metacommunity.

Given that the usual usage of this function is to generate a plausible ecosystem under such a scenario, one would have a hard time justifying the use of replace=TRUE as it allows (for example) a singleton metacommunity species to have multiple representatives in the returned ecosystem.

However, for large metacommunities and small subsamples, the distinction between replace=TRUE and replace=FALSE is small.

Value

Returns a count object

References

E. G. Leigh and others 1993. “The decline of tree diversity on newly isolated tropical islands: a test of a null hypothesis and some implications”. Evolutionary Ecology, 7:76-102

Author

Robin K. S. Hankin

Note

If replace=FALSE, the returned count object includes extinct species. Use extant(isolate(...)) to return only extant species

Examples

a <- rand.neutral(1000,10)
no.of.spp(a)
#> [1] 52
no.of.spp(isolate(a))
#> [1] 46