The pattern of species abundance, represented by the number of individuals per species within an ecological community, is one of the fundamental characteristics of biodiversity. However, despite their obvious significance in ecology and biogeography, there is still no clear understanding of these patterns at large spatial scales. Here, we develop a hierarchical modelling approach to estimate macroscale patterns of species abundance. Using this approach, estimates of absolute abundance of 1248 woody plant species at a 10-km-grid-square resolution over East Asian islands across subtropical to temperate biomes are obtained. We provide two examples of the basic and applied use of the estimated species abundance for (1) inference of macroevolutionary processes underpinning regional biodiversity patterns and (2) quantitative community-wide assessment of a national red list. These results highlight the potential of the elucidation of macroscale species abundance that has thus far been an inaccessible but critical property of biodiversity.

由生态群落中每个物种的个体数量表示的物种丰富度模式是生物多样性的基本特征之一。然而，尽管它们在生态学和生物地理学中具有明显的意义，但是在大的空间尺度上仍然没有对这些模式的清晰理解。在这里，我们开发了一种层次建模方法来估计物种丰富度的宏观格局。使用这种方法，获得了从东亚岛屿到亚热带到温带生物群落的1048平方格分辨率下1248种木本植物物种的绝对丰度估计。我们提供了两个示例，说明了估计的物种丰富度的基本和应用用途：（1）推断支持区域生物多样性模式的宏观进化过程；（2）全国范围内对国家红色名录的定量评估。这些结果凸显了阐明宏观物种丰富度的潜力，迄今为止，这是生物多样性无法获得但至关重要的特性。