Figure 3. Empirical distributions best fitting four species abundance distributions. Each one is favoured over the next-best supported model by the largest margin observed across the entire Ecological Register data set. Line colours are as in Fig. 1. (A) The log series is most strongly supported by an ant survey from southern Ghana (Belshaw & Bolton, 1994). (B) The odds distribution is best supported by an arthropod inventory from Jefferson City, Missouri (Dowdy, 1947). (C) The expe distribution is best supported by a tree inventory from Barro Colorado Island, Panama (Condit et al., 1996). (D) A saturated model (line not shown) is most strongly needed to account for a tree inventory from Mawnai, India (Mishra et al., 2005).