Navigating the multiple meanings of β diversity: A roadmap for the practicing ecologist

Ecology Letters

Volumn 14, Issue 1, 2011, Pages 19-28

  Anderson, Marti J ^a   Crist, Thomas O ^b   Chase, Jonathan M ^c   Vellend, Mark ^d   Inouye, Brian D ^e   Freestone, Amy L ^f   Sanders, Nathan J ^g   Cornell, Howard V ^h   Comita, Liza S ⁱ   Davies, Kendi F ^j   Harrison, Susan P ^h   Kraft, Nathan J B ^d   Stegen, James C ^k   Swenson, Nathan G ^l  

^a MASSEY UNIVERSITY   (New Zealand)

^b MIAMI UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^c WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE   (United States)

^d UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA   (Canada)

^e FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^f Temple University   (United States)

^g UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE   (United States)

^h UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

ⁱ NATIONAL CENTER FOR ECOLOGICAL ANALYSIS AND SYNTHESIS   (United States)

^j UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO   (United States)

^k UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA   (United States)

^l MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

more..

Author keywords

Biodiversity; Community ecology; Environmental gradients; Heterogeneity; Multivariate analysis; Species composition; Turnover; Variance partitioning; Variation

Indexed keywords

COMMUNITY ECOLOGY; CORAL; DATA SET; ECOLOGICAL APPROACH; ENVIRONMENTAL GRADIENT; HETEROGENEITY; MULTIVARIATE ANALYSIS; RELATIVE ABUNDANCE; SPECIES DIVERSITY; TURNOVER;

ARTICLE; BIODIVERSITY; BIOLOGICAL MODEL; CORAL REEF; ECOLOGY; EL NINO; INDONESIA; MULTIVARIATE ANALYSIS;

BIODIVERSITY; CORAL REEFS; ECOLOGY; EL NINO-SOUTHERN OSCILLATION; INDONESIA; MODELS, BIOLOGICAL; MULTIVARIATE ANALYSIS;

ANTHOZOA;

EID: 78650061319     PISSN: 1461023X     EISSN: 14610248     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1461-0248.2010.01552.x     Document Type: Article

References (80)

1. Anderson, M.J. (2001). A new method for non-parametric multivariate analysis of variance. Austral Ecol., 26, 32-46.
2. Anderson, M.J. (2006). Distance-based tests for homogeneity of multivariate dispersions. Biometrics, 62, 245-253.
3. Anderson, M.J., Diebel, C.E., Blom, W.M. & Landers, T.J. (2005). Consistency and variation in kelp holdfast assemblages: spatial patterns of biodiversity for the major phyla at different taxonomic resolutions. J. Exp. Mar. Biol. Ecol., 320, 35-56.
4. Anderson, M.J., Ellingsen, K.E. & McArdle, B.H. (2006). Multivariate dispersion as a measure of beta diversity. Ecol. Lett., 9, 683-693.
5. Anderson, M.J., Gorley, R.N. & Clarke, K.R. (2008). PERMANOVA+ for PRIMER: Guide to Software and Statistical Methods. PRIMER-E, Plymouth, UK.
6. Baselga, A. (2010). Multiplicative partition of true diversity yields independent alpha and beta components; additive partition does not. Ecology, 91, 1974-1981.
7. Borcard, D., Legendre, P. & Drapeau, P. (1992). Partialling out the spatial component of ecological variation. Ecology, 73, 1045-1055.
8. Ter Braak, C.J.F. (1985). Correspondence analysis of incidence and abundance data: properties in terms of a unimodal response model. Biometrics, 41, 859-873.
9. Ter Braak, C.J.F. (1986). The analysis of vegetation-environment relationships by canonical correspondence analysis. Vegetatio, 69, 69-77.
10. Ter Braak, C.J.F. (1987). Ordination. In: Data Analysis in Community and Landscape Ecology (eds Jongman, R.H.G., Ter Braak, C.J.F. & Van Tongeren, O.F.R.). Pudoc, Wageningen, The Netherlands, pp. 91-173.
11. Bray, J.R. & Curtis, J.T. (1957). An ordination of the upland forest communities of southern Wisconsin. Ecol. Monogr., 27, 325-349.
12. Chao, A., Chazdon, R.L., Colwell, R.K. & Shen, T.-J. (2005). A new statistical approach for assessing similarity of species composition with incidence and abundance data. Ecol. Lett., 8, 148-159.
13. Chase, J.M. (2007). Drought mediates the importance of stochastic community assembly. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 104, 17430-17434.
14. Chase, J.M. (2010). Stochastic community assembly causes higher biodiversity in more productive environments. Science, 328, 1388-1391.
15. Clarke, K.R., Somerfield, P.J. & Chapman, M.G. (2006). On resemblance measures for ecological studies, including taxonomic dissimilarities and a zero-adjusted Bray-Curtis coefficient for denuded assemblages. J. Exp. Mar. Biol. Ecol., 330, 55-80.
16. Crist, T.O. & Veech, J.A. (2006). Additive partitioning of rarefaction curves and species-area relationships: unifying α-, β- and γ-diversity with sample size and habitat area. Ecol. Lett., 9, 923-932.
17. Crist, T.O., Veech, J.A., Gering, J.C. & Summerville, K.S. (2003). Partitioning species diversity across landscapes and regions: a hierarchical analysis of α, β, and γ-diversity. Am. Nat., 162, 734-743.
18. Davison, A.C. & Hinkley, D.V. (1997). Bootstrap Methods and Their Application. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
19. Dray, S., Legendre, P. & Peres-Neto, P. (2006). Spatial modelling: a comprehensive framework for principal coordinate analysis of neighbour matrices (PCNM). Ecol. Model., 196, 483-493.
20. Duivenvoorden, J.F., Svenning, J.-C. & Wright, S.J. (2002). Beta diversity in tropical forests. Science, 295, 636-637.
21. Dutilleul, P., Stockwell, J.D., Frigon, F. & Legendre, P. (2000). The Mantel versus Pearson's correlation analysis: assessment of the differences for biological and environmental studies. J. Agric. Biol. Env. Stat., 5, 131-150.
22. Gering, J.C., Crist, T.O. & Veech, J.A. (2003). Additive partitioning of species diversity across multiple spatial scales: implications for regional conservation of biodiversity. Cons. Biol., 17, 488-499.
23. Graham, C.H. & Fine, P.V.A. (2008). Phylogenetic beta diversity: linking ecological and evolutionary processes across space in time. Ecol. Lett., 11, 1265-1277.
24. Harrison, S., Ross, S.J. & Lawton, J.H. (1992). Beta diversity on geographic gradients in Britain. J. Anim. Ecol., 61, 151-158.
25. Hubbell, S.J. (2001). The Unified Neutral Theory of Biodiversity and Biogeography. Princeton University Press, New Jersey.
26. Izsak, C. & Price, A.R.G. (2001). Measuring beta-diversity using a taxonomic similarity index, and its relation to spatial scale. Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser., 215, 69-77.
27. Jost, L. (2007). Partitioning diversity into independent alpha and beta components. Ecology, 88, 2427-2439.
28. Jost, L. (2010). Independence of alpha and beta diversities. Ecology, 91, 1969-1974.
29. Jurasinski, G., Retzer, V. & Beierkuhnlein, C. (2009). Inventory, differentiation, and proportional diversity: a consistent terminology for quantifying species diversity. Oecologia, 159, 15-26.
30. Koleff, P., Gaston, K.J. & Lennon, J.J. (2003). Measuring beta diversity for presence-absence data. J. Anim. Ecol., 72, 367-382.
31. Lande, R. (1996). Statistics and partitioning of species diversity, and similarity among multiple communities. Oikos, 76, 5-13.
32. Legendre, P. (2000). Comparison of permutation methods for the partial correlation and partial Mantel tests. J. Statist. Comput. Sim., 67, 37-73.
33. Legendre, P. (2008). Studying beta diversity: ecological variation partitioning by multiple regression and canonical analysis. J. Plant Ecol., 1, 3-8.
34. Legendre, P. & Anderson, M.J. (1999). Distance-based redundancy analysis: testing multispecies responses in multifactorial ecological experiments. Ecol. Monogr., 69, 1-24.
35. Legendre, P. & Fortin, M.-J. (2010). Comparison of the Mantel test and alternative approaches for detecting complex multivariate relationships in the spatial analysis of genetic data. Mol. Ecol. Resour., 10, 831-844.
36. Legendre, P. & Gallagher, E.D. (2001). Ecologically meaningful transformations for ordination of species data. Oecologia, 129, 271-280.
37. Legendre, P. & Legendre, L. (1998). Numerical Ecology, 2nd edn. Elsevier, Amsterdam.
38. Legendre, P., Borcard, D. & Peres-Neto, P.R. (2005). Analyzing beta diversity: partitioning the spatial variation of community composition data. Ecol. Monogr., 75, 435-450.
39. Legendre, P., Borcard, D. & Peres-Neto, P.R. (2008). Analyzing or explaining beta diversity? Comment. Ecology, 89, 3238-3244.
40. Legendre, P., Mi, X., Ren, H., Ma, K., Yu, M., Sun, I.-F. et al. (2009). Partitioning beta diversity in a sub-tropical broad-leaved forest in China. Ecology, 90, 663-674.
41. Lennon, J.J., Koleff, P., Greenwood, J.J.D. & Gaston, K.J. (2001). The geographical structure of British bird distributions: diversity, spatial turnover and scale. J. Anim. Ecol., 70, 966-979.
42. Loreau, M. (2000). Are communities saturated? On the relationship between α, β and γ diversity. Ecol. Lett., 3, 73-76.
43. MacArthur, R., Recher, H. & Cody, M. (1966). On the relation between habitat selection and species diversity. Am. Nat., 100, 319-332.
44. Manly, B.F.J. (2007). Randomization, Bootstrap and Monte Carlo Methods in Biology, 3rd edn. Chapman & Hall, London.
45. Mantel, N. (1967). The detection of disease clustering and a generalized regression approach. Cancer Res., 27, 209-220.
46. McArdle, B.H. & Anderson, M.J. (2001). Fitting multivariate models to community data: a comment on distance-based redundancy analysis. Ecology, 82, 290-297.
47. McArdle, B.H. & Anderson, M.J. (2004). Variance heterogeneity, transformations and models of species abundance: a cautionary tale. Can. J. Fish. Aquat. Sci., 61, 1294-1302.
48. Nekola, J.C. & White, P.S. (1999). The distance decay of similarity in biogeography and ecology. J. Biogeogr., 26, 867-878.
49. Olsgard, F., Somerfield, P.J. & Carr, M.R. (1997). Relationships between taxonomic resolution and data transformations in analyses of a macrobenthic community along an established pollution gradient. Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser., 149, 173-181.
50. Pélissier, R. & Couteron, P. (2007). An operational, additive framework for species diversity partitioning and beta-diversity analysis. J. Ecol., 95, 294-300.
51. Qian, H. & Ricklefs, R.E. (2007). A latitudinal gradient in large-scale beta diversity for vascular plants in North America. Ecol. Lett., 10, 737-744.
52. Qian, H., Ricklefs, R.E. & White, P.S. (2005). Beta diversity of angiosperms in temperate floras of eastern Asia and eastern North America. Ecol. Lett., 8, 15-22.
53. Rao, C.R. (1995). A review of canonical coordinates and an alternative to correspondence analysis using Hellinger distance. Qüestiió, 19, 23-63.
54. Raup, D.M. & Crick, R.E. (1979). Measurement of faunal similarity in paleontology. J. Paleontol., 53, 1213-1227.
55. Ricotta, C. (2005). On hierarchical diversity decomposition. J. Veg. Sci., 16, 223-226.
56. Searle, S.R., Casella, G. & McCulloch, C.E. (1992). Variance Components. John Wiley & Sons, New York.
57. Smith, T.W. & Lundholm, J.T. (2010). Variation partitioning as a tool to distinguish between niche and neutral processes. Ecography, 33, 648-655.
58. Smouse, P.E., Long, J.C. & Sokal, R.R. (1986). Multiple-regression and correlation extensions of the Mantel test of matrix correspondence. Syst. Zool., 35, 627-632.
59. Soininen, J., McDonald, R. & Hillebrand, H. (2007). The distance decay of similarity in ecological communities. Ecography, 30, 3-12.
60. Somerfield, P.J. & Clarke, K.R. (1995). Taxonomic levels, in marine community studies, revisited. Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser., 127, 113-119.
61. Swenson, N.G., Anglada-Cordero, P. & Barone, J.A. (2010). Deterministic tropical tree community turnover: evidence from patterns of functional beta diversity along an elevational gradient. Proc. R. Soc. B, DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2010.1369.
62. Terlizzi, A., Benedetti-Cecchi, L., Bevilacqua, S., Fraschetti, S., Guidetti, P. & Anderson, M.J. (2005). Multivariate and univariate asymmetrical analyses in environmental impact assessment: a case study of Mediterranean subtidal sessile assemblages. Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser., 289, 27-42.
63. Tuomisto, H. (2010a). A diversity of beta diversities: straightening up a concept gone awry. Part 1. Defining beta diversity as a function of alpha and gamma diversity. Ecography, 33, 2-22.
64. Tuomisto, H. (2010b). A diversity of beta diversities: straightening up a concept gone awry. Part 2. Quantifying beta diversity and related phenomena. Ecography, 33, 23-45.
65. Tuomisto, H. & Ruokolainen, K. (2006). Analyzing or explaining beta diversity? Understanding the targets of different methods of analysis. Ecology, 87, 2697-2708.
66. Tuomisto, H. & Ruokolainen, K. (2008). Analyzing or explaining beta diversity? Reply. Ecology, 89, 3244-3256.
67. Tuomisto, H., Ruokolainen, K. & Yli-Halla, M. (2003). Dispersal, environment, and floristic variation of western Amazonian forests. Science, 299, 241-244.
68. Underwood, A.J. (1990). Experiments in ecology and management- their logics, functions and interpretations. Austral. J. Ecol., 15, 365-358.
69. Underwood, A.J. (1991). Beyond BACI: experimental designs for detecting human environmental impacts on temporal variations in natural populations. Aust. J. Mar. Freshw. Res., 42, 569-587.
70. Underwood, A.J., Chapman, M.G. & Connell, S.D. (2000). Observations in ecology: you can't make progress on processes without understanding the patterns. J. Exp. Mar. Biol. Ecol., 250, 97-115.
71. Veech, J.A. & Crist, T.O. (2009). PARTITION: Software for Hierarchical Partitioning of Species Diversity, ver. 3.0. Available at:
72. Veech, J.A. & Crist, T.O. (2010a). Diversity partitioning without statistical independence of alpha and beta. Ecology, 91, 1964-1969.
73. Veech, J.A. & Crist, T.O. (2010b). Toward a unified view of diversity partitioning. Ecology, 91, 1988-1992.
74. Veech, J.A., Crist, T.O. & Summerville, K.S. (2003). Intraspecific aggregation decreases local species diversity of arthropods. Ecology, 84, 3376-3383.
75. Vellend, M. (2001). Do commonly used indices of β-diversity measure species turnover? J. Veg. Sci., 12, 545-552.
76. Vellend, M. (2010). Conceptual synthesis in community ecology. Q. Rev. Biol., 85, 183-206.
77. Vellend, M., Verheyen, K., Flinn, K.M., Jacquemyn, H., Kolb, A., Van Calster, H. et al. (2007). Homogenization of forest plant communities and weakening of species-environment relationships via agricultural land use. J. Ecol., 95, 565-573.
78. Warwick, R.M., Clarke, K.R. & Suharsono (1990). A statistical analysis of coral community responses to the 1982-83 El Niño in the Thousand Islands, Indonesia. Coral Reefs, 8, 171-179.
79. Whittaker, R.H. (1960). Vegetation of the Siskiyou Mountains, Oregon and California. Ecol. Monogr., 30, 279-338.
80. Whittaker, R.H. (1972). Evolution and measurement of species diversity. Taxon, 21, 213-251.