Environmental correlates of species rank – abundance distributions in 1 global drylands 2 3

Environmental correlates of species rank – abundance distributions in 1 global drylands 2 3 Werner Ulrich, Santiago Soliveres, Andrew D. Thomas, Andrew J. Dougill & 4 Fernando T. Maestre 5 6 Chair of Ecology and Biogeography, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń 7 Lwowska 1, 87-100 Toruń, Poland, e-mail: ulrichw@umk.pl. 8 Institute of Plant Sciences, University of Bern, Alterbengrain 21, 3013 Bern, 9 Switzerland, e-mail: santiago.soliveres@ips.unibe.ch. 10 3 Department of Geography and Earth Sciences, Aberystwyth University, SY23 3DB, 11 UK, e-mail: ant23@aber.ac.uk 12 4 School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK, e-mail: 13 a.j.dougill@leeds.ac.uk 14 Área de Biodiversidad y Conservación, Biología y Geología, Física y Química 15 Inorgánica, Escuela Superior de Ciencias Experimentales y Tecnología, Universidad 16 Rey Juan Carlos, 28933 Móstoles, Spain, e-mail: fernando.maestre@urjc.es. 17 18 *Author for correspondence (Phone: 0048 56 611 2649, e-mail: ulrichw@umk.pl) 19 20 Category: Community Ecology 21 22 23 Author contributions: SS, ADD, AJD, and FTM collected the data and provided the raw 24 data base. WU performed the data analysis. WU wrote the first draft of the manuscript, 25 and all authors contributed substantially to revisions. 26 27