Fitting and comparing competing models of the species abundance distribution: assessment and prospect

A species abundance distribution (SAD) characterises patterns in the commonness and rarity of all species within an ecological community. As such, the SAD provides the theoretical foundation for a number of other biogeographical and macroecological patterns, such as the species– area relationship, as well as being an interesting pattern in its own right. While there has been resurgence in the study of SADs in the last decade, less focus has been placed on methodology in SAD research, and few attempts have been made to synthesise the vast array of methods which have been employed in SAD model evaluation. As such, our review has two aims. First, we provide a general overview of SADs, including descriptions of the commonly used distributions, plotting