Computing additive beta-diversity from presence and absence scores: a critique and alternative parameters

Theoretical Population Biology
Carlo Ricotta

Abstract

Whittaker first proposed to measure the variation in species composition among plots or beta-diversity as the ratio between regional diversity (gamma-diversity) and average local diversity (alpha-diversity). More recently, an alternative way of partitioning diversity for which beta-diversity is obtained as the difference between gamma-diversity and average alpha-diversity has become very popular for linking the structure of species assemblages to ecosystem functioning in a spatially explicit manner. Unfortunately, additive beta-diversity computed from species presences and absences suffers from the major drawback of being dependent on regional species richness. For instance, if the separation between beta-diversity and gamma-diversity is incomplete, so that variation in species composition is affected by species richness, then differences in beta-diversity values among different sets of plots could reflect differences in the species count rather than any fundamental difference in species composition among the plots. Based on the above observation, in this paper I will first propose a basic requirement for beta-diversity measures that adequately captures our intuitive notion of independence of species richness. Next, I will show...Continue Reading

References

May 3, 2003·Journal of Theoretical Biology·Carlo Ricotta

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