Sensitivity of functional diversity metrics to sampling intensity

Abstract

Summary Functional diversity (FD) metrics are increasingly used in ecological research, particularly in the studies of community assembly and ecosystem functioning. However, studies using the FD metrics vary greatly in the intensity by which ecological communities were sampled and it is largely unknown how sensitive these metrics are to low sampling intensity (undersampling). In this study, we used a combination of simulations with theoretically assembled communities and three comprehensive, independent, empirical datasets on plant, ground beetle, and bird communities to investigate the sensitivity of nine commonly used FD metrics to undersampling. Simulations with both theoretical communities and empirical data showed that in a wide range of contexts, the measurement of various FD metrics requires a much higher sampling effort to reach an ‘adequate’ precision (defined as an r2 of at least 0·7 between different subsets of the same population), than that required for commonly used taxonomic diversity metrics (e.g. species richness), although the ‘accuracy’ (their deviation from the diversity value of a completely sampled community) of their measurements is not more sensitive to undersampling than species richness. We also found that some FD metrics (e.g. Functional Dispersion) are consistently less sensitive to undersampling than others (e.g. nearest neighbour distance‐metrics). Problems of undersampling were generally most severe in datasets with high overall species richness and low overall abundances. We found that the precision of many FD metrics is highly sensitive to undersampling, and more so than commonly used taxonomic diversity metrics. Therefore, to ensure reproducible results in functional biodiversity research, we recommend that thorough sampling designs are used to sample communities and that datasets originally collected for studying taxonomic diversity should only be used for FD when it can be shown that undersampling is not a major issue. In cases where undersampling is suspected or logistically unavoidable, the FD metrics that are relatively insensitive to its effects (e.g. Functional Dispersion) should be prioritized.

Transcending data gaps: a framework to reduce inferential errors in ecological analyses

“…; van der Plas et al . ). Global FD analysis is likely to become more accessible when the missing data problem is addressed.…”

“…; van der Plas et al . ). Our results suggest that FD measurements in complete case analyses are substantially affected by the degree of systematic bias in trait data.…”

“…; van der Plas et al . ; epidemiology – Klebanoff & Cole ; political science – Lall ; statistics – Little & Rubin ; van Buuren ), yet statistical software and modules quietly eliminate cases with missing data (i.e. complete case analysis).…”

“…; van der Plas et al . ). Given the benefits of FD analyses and urgency to utilise their applications under rapid global change, a general gap‐filling framework relevant across taxonomic domains and ecological disciplines is urgently needed to avoid misinterpretation of FD patterns (di Marco et al .…”

Functional ecology and imperfect detection of species

“…Imperfect detection of species is therefore an important source of bias when comparing species richness among communities (Kéry & Schmid, 2004;Yoccoz, Nichols, & Boulinier, 2001). Recent studies have asked whether imperfect detection might also bias other important dimensions of biodiversity, such as functional diversity (Cardoso et al, 2014;Mihaljevic, Joseph, & Johnson, 2015;van der Plas, van Klink, Manning, Olff, & Fischer, 2017). Jarzyna and Jetz (2016) suggested that detectability depends not only on site and survey conditions, but also on characteristics of individual species, that is on their traits.…”