We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
PARTITIONING DIVERSITY INTO INDEPENDENT ALPHA AND BETA COMPONENTS.
- Authors
Jost, Lou
- Abstract
Existing general definitions of beta diversity often produce a beta with a hidden dependence on alpha. Such a beta cannot be used to compare regions that differ in alpha diversity. To avoid misinterpretation, existing definitions of alpha and beta must be replaced by a definition that partitions diversity into independent alpha and beta components. Such a unique definition is derived here. When these new alpha and beta components are transformed into their numbers equivalents (effective numbers of elements), Whittaker's multiplicative law (alpha x beta = gamma) is necessarily true for all indices. The new beta gives the effective number of distinct communities. The most popular similarity and overlap measures of ecology (Jaccard, Sorensen, Horn, and Morisita-Horn indices) are monotonic transformations of the new beta diversity. Shannon measures follow deductively from this formalism and do not need to be borrowed from information theory; they are shown to be the only standard diversity measures which can be decomposed into meaningful independent alpha and beta components when community weights are unequal.
- Subjects
ECOLOGY; ENVIRONMENTAL sciences; POPULATION biology; BIODIVERSITY; ANIMAL populations; BIOTIC communities; HABITATS; BIOLOGY; INFORMATION theory
- Publication
Ecology, 2007, Vol 88, Issue 10, p2427
- ISSN
0012-9658
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1890/06-1736.1