A Nonparametric Lower Bound for the Number of Species Shared by Multiple Communities

In biological and ecological statistical inference, it is practically useful to provide a lower bound for species richness in a community. Chao (1984, 1989) derived a nonparametric lower bound for species richness in a single community. However, there have been no lower bounds proposed in the literature for the number of species shared by multiple communities. Based on sample species abundance or replicated incidence records from each of the N communities, we derive in this article a nonparametric approach to constructing a lower bound for the number of species shared by N (N ≥ 2) communities. The approach is valid for all types of species abundance distributions (for abundance data) or species detection probabilities (for replicated incidence data). Variance estimators for the proposed lower bounds are obtained by using typical asymptotic theory. Simulation results are reported to examine the performance of the lower bounds. Replicated incidence data of ciliate species collected in three areas from Namibia, southwest Africa, are used for illustration. We also briefly discuss the application of the proposed method to estimate the size of a shared population (i.e., the number of individuals in the intersection of multiple populations) based on capture-recapture data from each population.