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Phylogenetic diversity metrics for ecological communities: integrating species richness, abundance and evolutionary history
Author(s) -
Cadotte Marc W.,
Jonathan Davies T.,
Regetz James,
Kembel Steven W.,
Cleland Elsa,
Oakley Todd H.
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
ecology letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 6.852
H-Index - 265
eISSN - 1461-0248
pISSN - 1461-023X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1461-0248.2009.01405.x
Subject(s) - phylogenetic diversity , phylogenetic tree , species richness , ecology , species evenness , abundance (ecology) , community , relative abundance distribution , biology , relative species abundance , biodiversity , species diversity , rank abundance curve , alpha diversity , clade , ecosystem , biochemistry , gene
Phylogenetic information is increasingly being used to understand the assembly of biological communities and ecological processes. However, commonly used metrics of phylogenetic diversity (PD) do not incorporate information on the relative abundances of individuals within a community. In this study, we develop three indices of PD that explicitly consider species abundances. First, we present a metric of phylogenetic‐abundance evenness that evaluates the relationship between the abundance and the distribution of terminal branch lengths. Second, we calculate an index of hierarchical imbalance of abundances at the clade level encapsulating the distribution of individuals across the nodes in the phylogeny. Third, we develop an index of abundance‐weighted evolutionary distinctiveness and generate an entropic index of phylogenetic diversity that captures both information on evolutionary distances and phylogenetic tree topology, and also serves as a basis to evaluate species conservation value. These metrics offer measures of phylogenetic diversity incorporating different community attributes. We compare these new metrics to existing ones, and use them to explore diversity patterns in a typical California annual grassland plant community at the Jasper Ridge biological preserve. Ecology Letters (2010) 13: 96–105