On the Statistical Mechanics of Alien Species

Many species of plants are found in regions to which they are alien. Their global 10 distributions are characterised by a family of exponential functions of the kind that arise in 11 elementary statistical mechanics (an example in ecology is MacArthur's broken stick). We show here 12 that all these functions are quantitatively reproduced by a model containing a single parameter – 13 some global resource partitioned at random on the two axes of species number and site number. A 14 dynamical model generating this equilibrium is a two fold stochastic process and suggests a curious 15 and interesting biological interpretation in terms of niche structures fluctuating with time and 16 productivity; with sites and species highly idiosyncratic. Idiosyncrasy implies that attempts to 17 identify a priori those species likely to become naturalized are unlikely to be successful. Although 18 this paper is primarily concerned with a particular problem in population biology, the two fold 19 stochastic process may be of more general interest. 20