How To Identify Plants At The SRP: Plant Distribution
A fundamental law of biology: the number of species is proportional to roughly the third root of area. This is true for animals and plants.
It makes sense! More area allows more species to exist. The number of species cannot increase as fast as the area, since some species will be found in the larger area.
Thus the rule of thumb: if you consider an area ten times larger, you will find twice as many species.
http://tchester.org/srp/plants/how_to_id/21.html
Comments and feedback: Tom Chester
Last update: 16 October 2003.