Using Species Proportions to Quantify Turnover in Biodiversity

Abstract

Quantifying species turnover is an important aspect of biodiversity monitoring. Turnover measures are usually based on species presence/absence data, reflecting the rate at which species are replaced. However, measures that reflect the rate at which individuals of a species are replaced by individuals of another species are far more sensitive to change. In this paper, we propose families of turnover measures that reflect changes in species proportions. We study the properties of our measures, and use simulation to assess their success in detecting turnover. Using data on the British farmland bird community from the breeding bird survey, we evaluate our measures to quantify temporal turnover and how it varies across the British mainland.Supplementary materials accompanying this paper appear on-line.

Keywords

Biodiversity; Breeding bird survey; Species abundance distribution; Turnover measures

Published in

Journal of Agricultural, Biological, and Environmental Statistics
2016, Volume: 21, number: 2, pages: 363-381 Publisher: SPRINGER

SLU Authors

• Harrison, Philip J

  • SLU Swedish Species Information Centre, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

UKÄ Subject classification

Ecology


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13253-015-0243-0

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/117857