---
title: "John Alroy"
type: "entity"
entity_kind: "person"
status: "hub"
canonical_name: "John Alroy"
aliases: []
first_seen: "2026-07-12T00:00:00.000Z"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
connects_to: ["shareholder quorum subsampling","sample coverage","coverage-based rarefaction","paleobiology","Anne Chao"]
seek_code_commit: "7d6d9ed"
---


Paleobiologist at Macquarie University who invented and named **shareholder
quorum subsampling** (SQS) — a method for subsampling fossil assemblages to a
fixed level of sample coverage rather than a fixed specimen count, first
published in a 2009 GSA abstract. He matters to this vault as the paleobiology
side of a genuine cross-domain convergence: SQS reaches the same target
quantity — richness standardized to a fixed coverage level — that ecologists
Anne Chao and Lou Jost formalized three years later as "coverage-based
rarefaction" (CBR), and Alroy disputes both the naming and, on his own
site's account, the priority of that later formalization.

## References
- [[claim-paleobiology-reinvented-coverage-based-rarefaction-as-quorum-subsampling]] — the original convergence note, corrected 2026-08-28
- [[claim-chao-jost-2012-calls-alroys-sqs-a-different-algorithmic-technique-from-their-closed-form-estimator]] — his SQS algorithm is a Monte Carlo estimator, distinct from Chao & Jost's closed-form equation
- [[claim-alroy-and-chao-jost-dispute-priority-for-coverage-standardized-richness-naming]] — the priority and naming dispute, in his own words
- [[claim-alroy-distinguishes-sqs-from-rarefaction-by-fixed-coverage-not-fixed-sample-size]] — his own definitional line between SQS and classical rarefaction
- Captures: 2026-07-12 (first vault mention, via title/subtitle only); 2026-08-28 (hub built — his own SQS.html documentation page read directly for the first time in this vault)