Testing the performance of beta diversity measures based on incidence data: the robustness to undersampling

Researchers measuring beta diversity have rarely concerned themselves with the problems of how complete the species lists of studied communities are, and of how the varying degrees of completeness can actually change estimates of beta diversity. No comprehensive assessment has been made regarding th...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Diversity & distributions 2009-11, Vol.15 (6), p.1081-1090
Main Authors: Cardoso, Pedro, Borges, Paulo A. V., Veech, Joseph A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accumulation curves
Animal ecology
Animal, plant and microbial ecology
Applied ecology
Araneae
Arthropoda
Arthropods
beta diversity
Biodiversity
Biodiversity conservation
Biodiversity Research
Biological and medical sciences
Comparative studies
completeness
Datasets
Diversity indices
Ecology
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
General aspects
Mathematical completeness
Measurement techniques
Sampling
similarity indices
Species
Species diversity
Spiders
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Summary:Researchers measuring beta diversity have rarely concerned themselves with the problems of how complete the species lists of studied communities are, and of how the varying degrees of completeness can actually change estimates of beta diversity. No comprehensive assessment has been made regarding the behaviour of most beta diversity indices when applied to incomplete samples, a situation which is more common than usually recognized. Our objective was to assess the behaviour and robustness of a number of beta diversity measures for incidence data from undersampled communities. Mainland Portugal and the Azorean archipelago (North Atlantic). Data from intensive sampling of spiders in mainland Portugal and arthropods in Azores were collected. We examined the properties of 15 beta diversity measures developed for incidence data. We simulated varying degrees of completeness, whereas computing beta diversity for selected pairs of samples. The robustness of these beta diversity accumulation curves was assessed for the purpose of finding the best measures for undersampled communities. The Harrison et al.β₋₂ and the Williams β₋₃ are particularly robust to undersampling. These measures are also insensitive to differences of alpha diversity (species richness) between communities, and therefore to nestedness. Colwell & Coddington βcc and the related Jaccard βj and Gaston et al.βg performed best of the measures sensitive to alpha diversity. They performed poorly, however, when compared communities exhibited very low values of beta diversity. In such cases, the Routledge βr performed the best. No index was found to perform without bias in all circumstances. Overall, β₋₂, β₋₃ and βcc (or related measures βj and βg) are recommended as they seem to be the most robust to undersampling.
ISSN:1366-9516
1472-4642
DOI:10.1111/j.1472-4642.2009.00607.x