1. Scientists have tried to establish relationship between species diversity and the size of the habitat. It is considered that number of species present is directly proportional to the area.
2. It is understood that larger areas may have more resources that can be distributed amongst the inhabitant species.
3. Alexander von Humboldt observed that species richness does increase with the increase in area but only till a certain limit.
4. For many species this curve is a rectangular hyperbola.
5. If we consider S to be species richness, A as area under study, C as the Y intercept and Z as the slope of the line, this relationship can be described by the equation, log S = log C + Z log A.
6. On logarithmic scale this relationship is a straight line, as observed in the figure above. For smaller areas, value of Z ranges between 0.1 to 0.2 regardless of species or region under study.
7. But for the larger areas like the entire continents, slopes are closer to vertical axis i.e. steeper.
8. This observation indicates that in very large areas, number of species found, increase faster than the area explored.