Quantifying functional diversity with graph-theoretical measures: advantages and pitfalls

Ricotta, C. and Moretti, M. (2008) Quantifying functional diversity with graph-theoretical measures: advantages and pitfalls. Community Ecology, 9 (1). pp. 11-16. ISSN 1585-8553

Text comec.9.2008.1.2.pdf Restricted to Repository staff only until 30 June 2028. Download (247kB)

Abstract

Recently, a number of measures of functional diversity have been proposed for data on species presences and absences. One of the most fashionable methods uses cluster analysis of species computed from a matrix of functional characters. Functional diversity is then summarized as the sum of branch lengths of the dendrogram (FDD). Like other graph-theoretical measures of functional diversity, FDD is an increasing function of species richness. This makes FDD inadequate for comparative studies if we want to quantify a component of functional diversity that is not directly related to differences in species counts. The aim of this paper is thus to develop a graph-theoretical measure of functional diversity that does not depend of species richness. The edges of the minimum spanning tree, calculated from the pair-wise inter-species dissimilarity matrix based on functional traits, are ranked and then a power law relationship is established with the cumulative distances. We empirically demonstrate that the exponent of this relationship is independent of species richness and is therefore a suitable measure of functional diversity.

Actions (login required)

Edit Item