NEW MULTIDIMENSIONAL FUNCTIONAL DIVERSITY INDICES FOR A MULTIFACETED FRAMEWORK IN FUNCTIONAL ECOLOGY

Ecology ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 89 (8) ◽  
pp. 2290-2301 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sébastien Villéger ◽  
Norman W. H. Mason ◽  
David Mouillot
CERNE ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-84
Author(s):  
Jin-Tun Zhang ◽  
Xiaohang Bai ◽  
Dan Shao

ABSTRACT The interaction of diversity with environmental gradients is an important topic in ecology. This study investigated the pattern of change in functional diversity in forest communities along an altitudinal gradient in Yunmeng Mountain National Forest Park, China. Forty-two quadrats measuring 10 x 10 m in the forest communities were set up along this altitudinal gradient; plant species, traits and environmental variables were measured and recorded. Six functional diversity indices, namely, Modified functional attribute diversity (MFAD), Functional diversity plot-based dendrogram index (FDp), Functional diversity community-based dendrogram index (FDc), Functional evenness (FEve), Functional divergence (FDiv) and Functional dispersion (FDis), were used to calculate functional diversity. The results showed that functional diversity varied greatly in forest communities in the Yunmeng Mountain Forest Park. Functional diversity was significantly correlated with elevation and slope position and somewhat correlated with soil depth. Functional diversity increased with an increase in the elevation and decreased as the slope position changed from valley bottom to hill ridge. Functional diversity was closely related to species richness. The six functional diversity indices were all applicable to functional diversity studies of forest communities.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniela Aros-Mualin ◽  
Sarah Noben ◽  
Dirk N. Karger ◽  
César I. Carvajal-Hernández ◽  
Laura Salazar ◽  
...  

Functional traits determine how species interact with their abiotic and biotic environment. In turn, functional diversity describes how assemblages of species as a whole are adapted to their environment, which also determines how they might react to changing conditions. To fully understand functional diversity, it is fundamental to (a) disentangle the influences of environmental filtering and species richness from each other, (b) assess if the trait space saturates at high levels of species richness, and (c) understand how changes in species numbers affect the relative importance of the trait niche expansion and packing. In the present study, we determined functional diversity of fern assemblages by describing morphological traits related to resource acquisition along four tropical elevational transects with different environmental conditions and species richness. We used several functional diversity indices and their standardized effect size to consider different aspects of functional diversity. We contrasted these aspects of functional diversity with climate data and species richness using linear models and linear mixed models. Our results show that functional morphological trait diversity was primarily driven by species richness and only marginally by environmental conditions. Moreover, increasing species richness contributed progressively to packing of the morphological niche space, while at the same time decreasing morphological expansion until a saturation point was reached. Overall, our findings suggest that the density of co-occurring species is the fundamental driving force of morphological niche structure, and environmental conditions have only an indirect influence on fern resource acquisition strategies.


2012 ◽  
Vol 24 (5) ◽  
pp. 794-806 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norman W.H. Mason ◽  
Francesco de Bello ◽  
David Mouillot ◽  
Sandrine Pavoine ◽  
Stéphane Dray

Diversity ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 546
Author(s):  
Alexis Joseph Rodríguez-Romero ◽  
Axel Eduardo Rico-Sánchez ◽  
Jacinto Elías Sedeño-Díaz ◽  
Eugenia López-López

The analysis of functional diversity has shown to be more sensitive to the effects of natural and anthropogenic disturbances on the assemblages of aquatic macroinvertebrates than the classical analyses of structural ecology. However, this ecological analysis perspective has not been fully explored in tropical environments of America. Protected Natural Areas (PNAs) such as biosphere reserves can be a benchmark regarding structural and functional distribution patterns worldwide, so the characterization of the functional space of biological assemblages in these sites is necessary to promote biodiversity conservation efforts. Our work characterized the multidimensional functional space of the macroinvertebrate assemblages from an ecosystemic approach by main currents, involving a total of 15 study sites encompassing different impact and human influence scenarios, which were monitored in two contrasting seasons. We calculated functional diversity indices (dispersion, richness, divergence, evenness, specialization, and originality) from biological and ecological traits of the macroinvertebrate assemblages and related these indices to the physicochemical characteristics of water and four environmental indices (Water Quality Index, habitat quality, Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, and vegetation cover and land use). Our results show that the indices of functional richness, evenness, and functional specialization were sensitive to disturbance caused by salinization, concentration of nutrients and organic matter, and even to the occurrence of a forest fire in the reserve during one of the sampling seasons. These findings support the conclusion that the changes and relationships between the functional diversity indices and the physicochemical parameters and environmental indices considered were suitable for evaluating the ecological conditions within the reserve.


2018 ◽  
Vol 131 ◽  
pp. 646-654 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuan Xu ◽  
Thorsten Stoeck ◽  
Dominik Forster ◽  
Zuhang Ma ◽  
Liquan Zhang ◽  
...  

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lise Bacouillard ◽  
Noémie Baux ◽  
Jean-Claude Dauvin ◽  
Nicolas Desroy ◽  
Katja Juliana Geiger ◽  
...  

In the eastern Bay of Seine, which is a representative area of coastal zones exposed to numerous anthropogenic disturbances, data from a long-term monitoring program of the benthic macrofauna based on a framework of 60 stations sampled during 7 cruises from 1988 to 2016 were used to investigate the link between species and functional diversity at different scales and assess how long-term changes in the community structure may have altered the ecosystem functioning. To cover the different facets of α-diversity, a selection of species and functional diversity indices were calculated and the links between these metrics were determined from a Principal Component Analysis. The β-diversity was analysed by applying multivariate methods on both species and traits composition matrices. Population fluctuations of a few very abundant species led to the major variations observed in the structure of the community in both taxonomic and functional aspects. A certain redundancy was found among species and functional diversity indices in terms of richness, evenness and heterogeneity. Likewise, at regional scale, similar patterns were reported on the spatial structure of the community in terms of species and trait composition. These patterns persist over time suggesting that the community structure and its functioning are rather resilient.


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