Functional diversity metrics using kernel density n-dimensional hypervolumes

By Stefano Mammola, Pedro Cardoso. bioRxiv, 2020

129 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The use of kernel density n-dimensional hypervolumes [Global Ecol. Biogeogr. 23(5):595–609] in trait-based ecology is rapidly increasing. By representing the functional space of a species or community as a Hutchinsonian niche space, this relatively new approach is showing great potential for the advance of functional ecology theory. Functions for calculating the standard set of functional diversity (FD) indexes—richness, divergence, and regularity—have not been developed in the context of kernel density hypervolumes yet. This gap is delaying a full exploitation of the kernel density n-dimensional hypervolumes framework in functional ecology, meanwhile preventing the possibility to compare its performance with that of other FD methods. We develop a set of functions to calculate FD indices based on kernel density n-dimensional hypervolumes, including alpha (richness), beta (and respective components), dispersion, evenness, contribution, and originality. Altogether, these indexes provide a coherent framework to explore the primary mathematical components of FD within a kernel density setting. These new functions can work either with Hypervolumes objects, HypervolumeList objects, or raw data (species presence or abundance and their traits) as input data, and are versatile in terms of computation speed, which is achieved by controlling the number of stochastic points to be used in the different estimations. These newly developed functions are implemented within the R package BAT, an open platform for biodiversity assessments. As a coherent corpus of functional indexes based on a common algorithm, it opens up the possibility to fully explore the strengths of the Hutchinsonian niche concept in community ecology research.

Subfields: Ecological Modeling, Ecology, Nature and Landscape Conservation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b217218c2f080ac5dce2115259e5b151c2e45c1e