Botany - Biodiversity and its Conservation Question with Solution | TestHub

German naturalist and geographer Alexander von Humboldt while exploring the South American jungles, found that within a region species richness increased with increasing explored area but only up to a limit. The relationship between species richness and area turned out to be a rectangular hyperbola for a wide variety of organisms. The relationship is a straight line on a logarithmic scale.

$\mathrm{S}={\mathrm{CA}}^{\mathrm{Z}}$

Applying logarithm on both sides:

$\mathrm{logS} = \mathrm{logC} + \mathrm{ZlogA}$

where,

$\mathrm{S}$ = Species richness
$\mathrm{A}$ = Area
$\mathrm{Z}$ = Slope of the line (regression coefficient)
$\mathrm{C}$  = Y–intercept