Species-abundance models for brachiopods across the Ordovician–Silurian boundary of South China

Species-abundance models have been an important method for investigating community structure in modern biology in the past decades. Different species-abundance models can reflect different ecological meanings. The method is relatively new to palaeoecology. We take the latest Ordovician–earliest Silurian Cathaysiorthis brachiopod fauna of South China as an example, program the calculation in the R language, introduce the application of the species-abundance models and discuss the relationship between the abundance model and the ecological bathymetry of a certain brachiopod fauna. Finally, we testify the validity of the method and suggest that the species-abundance models should be treated as one of the supporting evidences in investigating the brachiopod palaeoecology.