Interpreting the replacement and richness difference components of beta diversity

• Published in: Global ecology and biogeography Vol. 23; no. 11; pp. 1324 - 1334
• Main Author: Legendre, Pierre
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Blackwell Science 01.11.2014; Blackwell Publishing Ltd; John Wiley & Sons Ltd; Blackwell; Wiley Subscription Services, Inc
• Subjects: Algebra; Animal and plant ecology; Animal communities; Animal ecology; Animal, plant and microbial ecology; Beta diversity; Biogeography; Biological and medical sciences; case studies; community composition data; community ecology; Coordinate systems; Decomposition; dissimilarity coefficients; Ecological processes; Ecosystems; fish communities; Freshwater fishes; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; General aspects; interspecific variation; local contributions to beta diversity; MACROECOLOGICAL METHODS; nestedness; Ordinations; replacement; researchers; richness difference; River ecology; rivers; Species diversity; Synecology; Community structure; community ecology; Biogeography; Beta diversity; Ecology; Replacement; local contributions to beta diversity; Community; community composition data; dissimilarity coefficients; richness difference

AIM: The variation in species composition among sites, or beta diversity, can be decomposed into replacement and richness difference. A debate is ongoing in the literature concerning the best ways of computing and interpreting these indices. This paper first reviews the historical development of the...