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Measurement of Biodiversity (MoB): A method to separate the scale‐dependent effects of species abundance distribution, density, and aggregation on diversity change
Author(s) -
McGlinn Daniel J.,
Xiao Xiao,
May Felix,
Gotelli Nicholas J.,
Engel Thore,
Blowes Shane A.,
Knight Tiffany M.,
Purschke Oliver,
Chase Jonathan M.,
McGill Brian J.
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
methods in ecology and evolution
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.425
H-Index - 105
ISSN - 2041-210X
DOI - 10.1111/2041-210x.13102
Subject(s) - species richness , rank abundance curve , ecology , biodiversity , body size and species richness , rarefaction (ecology) , relative abundance distribution , abundance (ecology) , spatial ecology , species diversity , biology , species evenness , spatial heterogeneity , relative species abundance
Little consensus has emerged regarding how proximate and ultimate drivers such as productivity, disturbance and temperature may affect species richness and other aspects of biodiversity. Part of the confusion is that most studies examine species richness at a single spatial scale and ignore how the underlying components of species richness can vary with spatial scale. We provide an approach for the measurement of biodiversity that decomposes changes in species rarefaction curves into proximate components attributed to: (a) the species abundance distribution, (b) density of individuals and (c) the spatial arrangement of individuals. We decompose species richness by comparing spatial and nonspatial sample‐ and individual‐based species rarefaction curves that differentially capture the influence of these components to estimate the relative importance of each in driving patterns of species richness change. We tested the validity of our method on simulated data, and we demonstrate it on empirical data on plant species richness in invaded and uninvaded woodlands. We integrated these methods into a new r package ( mobr ). The metrics that mobr provides will allow ecologists to move beyond comparisons of species richness in response to ecological drivers at a single spatial scale toward a dissection of the proximate components that determine species richness across scales.