Open Access‘Bigger data’ on scale-dependent effects of invasive species on biodiversity cannot overcome confounded analyses: a comment on Stohlgren & Rejmánek (2014)
Author(s) -
Jonathan M. Chase,
Kristin I. Powell,
Tiffany M. Knight
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
biology letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.596
H-Index - 110
eISSN - 1744-957X
pISSN - 1744-9561
DOI - 10.1098/rsbl.2015.0103
Subject(s) - biology , biodiversity , scale (ratio) , ecology , environmental resource management , cartography , economics , geography
A recent study by Stohlgren & Rejmánek (SR: Stohlgren TJ, Rejmánek M. 2014 Biol. Lett. 10. (doi:10.1098/rsbl.2013.0939)) purported to test the generality of a recent finding of scale-dependent effects of invasive plants on native diversity; dominant invasive plants decreased the intercept and increased the slope of the species-area relationship. SR (2014) find little correlation between invasive species cover and the slopes and intercepts of SARs across a diversity of sites. We show that the analyses of SR (2014) are inappropriate because of confounding causality.
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