Rapport Rule
Rapport Rule
Rapport Rule
Stevens (1989)[1] named the rule after Eduardo H. Rapoport, who had earlier provided evidence for
the phenomenon for subspecies of mammals (Rapoport 1975,[2] 1982[3]). Stevens used the rule to
explain greater species diversity in the tropics in the sense that latitudinal gradients in species
diversity and the rule have identical exceptional data and so must have the same underlying cause.
Narrower ranges in the tropics would facilitate more species to coexist. He later extended the rule to
altitudinal gradients, claiming that altitudinal ranges are greatest at greater altitudes (Stevens
1992 [4]), and to depth gradients in the oceans (Stevens 1996 [5]). The rule has been the focus of
intense discussion and given much impetus to exploring distributional patterns of plants and animals.
Stevens original paper has been cited about 330 times in the scientific literature.
is negligible: species diversity is much smaller at high than low latitudes. As an alternative method
the midpoint method has been proposed, which avoids this problem. It counts only those species
with the midpoint of their ranges in a particular latitudinal band.[8] An additional complication in
assessing Rapoport's rule for data based on field sampling is the possibility of a spurious pattern
driven by a sample-size artifact. Equal sampling effort at species-rich and species-poor localities
tends to underestimate range size at the richer localities relative to the poorer, when in fact range
sizes might not differ among localities.[16]