Comparing methods to separate components of beta diversity

Abstract

Summary Two alternative frameworks have been proposed to partition compositional dissimilarity into replacement and nestedness‐resultant component or into replacement and richness‐difference components. These are, respectively, the BAS (Baselga 2010, Global Ecology and Biogeography, 19, 134–143) and POD (Podani & Schmera . Oikos, 120, 1625–1638) frameworks. We conduct a systematic comparison of parallel components in alternative approaches. We test whether the replacement components derived from the BAS and POD frameworks are independent of richness difference. We also evaluate whether previously reported tests of monotonicity between indices and ecological processes are informative to assess the performance of indices. Finally, we illustrate the consequences of differences between the BAS and POD frameworks using the North American freshwater fish fauna as an empirical example. In the BAS framework, the nestedness‐resultant component (βjne or βsne) accounts only for richness differences derived from nested patterns while, in the POD framework, richness‐difference dissimilarity (βrich or βrich.s) accounts for all kind of richness differences. Likewise, the replacement components of both alternative methods account for different concepts. Only the replacement component of the BAS framework (βjtu or βsim) is independent of richness difference, while the parallel component in the POD framework (β−3 or β−3.s) is not (i.e. it is mathematically constrained by richness difference). Therefore, only the BAS framework allows separating (i) the variation in species composition derived from species replacement which is independent of richness difference (i.e. not mathematically constrained by it) and (ii) the variation in species composition derived from nested patterns.

Environmental and spatial drivers of beta diversity components of chironomid metacommunities in contrasting freshwater systems

“…However, results obtained based on the two approaches are not in 586 full agreement in that how chironomid beta diversity is organized. Namely, as it had been 587 shown earlier, the BAS approach gives more weight to the species replacement component 588 than the POD approach (Carvalho et al, 2013;Baselga & Leprieur, 2015) and this difference 589 is apparent in this study as well (Table 1 and In the studied lake system, most chironomid taxa are associated with the littoral zone, 606 while the offshore area is quite species poor (Árva et al, 2015a). Therefore, it is not 607 surprising that vectors of the richness difference component of the POD and nestedness 608 resultant component of the BAS approaches coincided with between site differences in water 609 depth and variables representing distances from particular elements of the littoral zone (e.g.…”

Is plant temporal beta diversity of field margins related to changes in management practices?

“…Assessment of beta diversity is a useful approach as it preserves species identities (through species composition). It bears the potential to unveil patterns of assemblage variation that would be independent of species richness (Baselga and Leprieur, 2015). In addition, beta diversity provides a link that connects diversity measures across scales, between local (i.e.…”

Edge Influence on Diversity of Orchids in Andean Cloud Forests

“…Beta-diversity was calculated following Baselga [43] as the Sorensen dissimilarity: βsor = βsim + βsne, where βsor is Sørensen dissimilarity, βsim is turnover component of Sørensen dissimilarity, and βsne is the nestedness component of the Sørensen dissimilarity. This index has been shown low sensitivity to high differences in species richness among samples [44].…”