FIG. C1. Comparison of discrete Pareto (gray) and continuous Pareto (dashed black) MLE fits to discrete Pareto data based on 10,000 Monte Carlo runs with λ = –2, a = 1, and n = 1000. Using the continuous Pareto significantly overestimates λ. In cases where the minimum value of x is >>1 the two estimates should eventually converge, but in most cases in ecology where data is discrete the minimum values of x will be too small for this approximation to be valid.