Tools and fresh approaches for species abundance distributions

The species abundance distribution (SAD) is a central pattern in ecology and of great importance for basic and applied management questions. Yet, surprisingly little progress has been made in identifying the mechanisms responsible for this fundamental pattern. We identify seven obstacles that have slowed progress in this field of research. We propose a working group that will develop a standardized database of SADs and computer code for analyzing SADs. The working group will publish these for the scientific community at large and also use them to pursue a promising new direction in exploring SADs based on perturbations (how the SAD changes as various environmental factors covary).