page_title: Body size and species richness
hierarchical_section_title: Body size and species richness
caption_attribution_description: graph of north american land mammals by size class
context_page_description: The body size-species richness distribution is a pattern observed in the way taxa are distributed over large spatial scales. The number of species that exhibit small body size generally far exceed the number of species that are large-bodied. Macroecology has long sought to understand the mechanisms that underlie the patterns of biodiversity, such as the body size-species richness pattern.
  This pattern was first observed by Hutchinson and MacArthur, and it appears to apply equally well to a broad range of taxa: from birds and mammals to insects, bacteria and deep sea gastropods. Nonetheless, its ubiquity remains undecided. Most studies focus on the distribution of taxonomic fractions of largely non-interacting species such as birds or mammals; this article is primarily based on those data.
context_section_description: The body size-species richness distribution is a pattern observed in the way taxa are distributed over large spatial scales. The number of species that exhibit small body size generally far exceed the number of species that are large-bodied. Macroecology has long sought to understand the mechanisms that underlie the patterns of biodiversity, such as the body size-species richness pattern.
  This pattern was first observed by Hutchinson and MacArthur (1959), and it appears to apply equally well to a broad range of taxa: from birds and mammals to insects, bacteria (May, 1978; Brown and Nicoletto, 1991) and deep sea gastropods (McClain, 2004). Nonetheless,  its ubiquity remains undecided. Most studies focus on the distribution of taxonomic fractions of largely non-interacting species such as birds or mammals; this article is primarily based on those data.
caption: Figure 1. The Frequency distribution of North American land mammals (n=465). The figure shows a right skewed distribution, with a mode tending to smaller species (50–100 g). The x-axis encompasses mammals ranging in size from 3 grams to 393 kilograms. Redrawn from Brown and Nicoletto (1991)[3]
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