Is the state of nature fair? Researchers measure how biomass is distributed in microbial communities

The distribution of income and growing inequality are central themes in public debate. Far less attention has been paid to how resources are distributed in ecological communities, in the so-called state of nature, without any social contract. Species abundance distributions have been studied extensively in ecology, but descriptively. They largely follow a distribution similar to human wealth. Yet the fairness of that distribution has rarely been examined.