Species-Area Relationship — NEET Biology
✅ Asked in NEET 2024Match List I with List II (NEET 2024) List – I A. Robert May B. Alexander von Humboldt C. Paul Ehrlich D. David Tilman List – II I. Species–Area relationship II. Long-term ecosystem experiment using outdoor plots III. Global species diversity at about 7 million IV. Rivet popper hypothesis
Match List I with List II (NEET 2024) List – I A. Robert May B. Alexander von Humboldt C. Paul Ehrlich D. David Tilman List – II I. Species–Area relationship II. Long-term ecosystem experiment using outdoor plots III. Global species diversity at about 7 million IV. Rivet popper hypothesis
Alexander von Humboldt described for the first time: (NEET 2017)
Answer & NCERT explanation
Correct answer: B — A–III, B–I, C–IV, D–II
Robert May calculated global species diversity at 7 million. Alexander von Humboldt first described species-area relationships. Paul Ehrlich proposed the rivet popper hypothesis comparing species to airplane rivets. David Tilman conducted long-term ecosystem experiments using outdoor plots to study biodiversity-stability relationships. These are fundamental contributions to ecology and biodiversity understanding in NCERT chapters.
Read more NCERT concept on the PYQ
Species-Area relationships: During his pioneering and extensive explorations in the wilderness of South American jungles, the great German naturalist and geographer Alexander von Humboldt observed that within a region species richness increased with increasing explored area, but only up to a limit. In fact, the relation between species richness and area for a wide variety of taxa (angiosperm plants, birds, bats, freshwater fishes) turns out to be a rectangular hyperbola. On a logarithmic scale, the relationship is a straight line described by the equation
The species-area relationship shows that species richness increases with explored area, following a rectangular hyperbola pattern (or straight line on a log scale). NTA tests this because Humboldt's observation is fundamental to understanding biodiversity distribution. Students often confuse the shape of the curve—thinking it's linear instead of hyperbolic—or forget that richness increases only up to a limit, not indefinitely. Remember: on normal scale it's a rectangular hyperbola, on logarithmic scale it becomes a straight line. This concept directly relates to conservation planning and understanding how habitat size affects species diversity.
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