How Should Beta-Diversity Inform Biodiversity Conservation?

Abstract

20To design robust protected area networks, accurately measure species losses, or understand the processes that maintain species diversity, conservation science must consider the organization of biodiversity in space. Central is beta-diversity-the component of regional diversity that accumulates from compositional differences between local species assemblages. We review how beta-diversity is impacted by 25 human activities, including farming, selective-logging, urbanisation, species invasions, overhunting, and climate change. Beta-diversity increases, decreases or remains unchanged by these impacts, depending on the balance of processes that cause species composition to become more different (biotic heterogenization) or more similar (biotic homogenization) between sites. While maintaining high beta-30 diversity is not always a desirable conservation outcome, understanding betadiversity is essential for protecting regional diversity and can directly assist conservation planning.

Woody Species Composition in Relation to Spatial and Environmental Gradients in Acacia-Commiphora Vegetation Ecosystem of Ethiopia

“…In other regions, the dissimilarity in species composition across spatial and environmental gradients was shown by previous studies [1,6]). In tropical regions, most of the previous studies were limited to the local scales or case studies and less is understood across scales [13]. For example, in Ethiopia, many of the earlier studies described vegetation structure only at local scale [14][15][16][17][18][19].…”

Small size today, aquarium dumping tomorrow: sales of juvenile non-native large fish as an important threat in Brazil

“…Moreover, the new Brazilian Normative Instruction 16 of 2014 (previous Ministry of Fishing and Aquaculture), which allows the trade of hundreds of large ornamental fish species (Vitule et al, 2014b), together with Normative Instruction 21 of 2014, which will facilitate the transport of these fishes across the country , will favor aquarium dumping and further increase biological invasions, with negative effects on native biodiversity -for example, biotic homogenization (i.e, the temporal replacement of endemic and specialists native species by generalist and human commensal non-native species) (Vitule et al, 2012) or additive heterogenization (i.e, non-native species establish, but few become ubiquitous) (Socolar et al, 2016). According to Frehse et al (2016), authorities do not recognize the Brazilian aquarium trade as a major introduction pathway; however, in terms of propagule pressure and species diversity, such trade is a major and unpredictable source of introductions.…”

The use of response measures in meta-analyses of land-use impacts on ecological communities: a review and the way forward

“…Examples include indices of (dis)similarity, measures of turnover and partitioning of diversity (Magurran 2004;Socolar et al 2016). The measurement of β diversity is a huge and expanding field in ecology, and in-depth discussion of the differences in measures is beyond the scope of this study.…”

“…The measurement of β diversity is a huge and expanding field in ecology, and in-depth discussion of the differences in measures is beyond the scope of this study. For overviews and discussions of the topic, we refer the readers to the comprehensive reviews of Anderson et al (2011) and Socolar et al (2016). In the primary literature, the use of β diversity measures has increased almost exponentially during the 2000s (Anderson et al 2011).…”

“…A limitation of β diversity measures is that even if they may show the existence of a difference in community composition or structure as a result of land-use, they do not provide knowledge about which species benefit and which suffer (Socolar et al 2016). Furthermore, for example Sørensen similarity index does not reveal proportionally minor, but ecologically important changes caused by e.g., an increase or decrease of ecologically significant species (Santini et al 2017).…”