Instruct: Identify the main category of Biorxiv papers based on the titles and abstracts
Query: Local biodiversity change reflects interactions among changing abundance, evenness and richness Biodiversity metrics often integrate data on the presence and abundance of multiple species. Yet understanding covariation of changes to the numbers of individuals, the evenness of species relative abundances, and the total number of species remains limited. Using individual-based rarefaction curves, we introduce a conceptual framework to understand how expected positive relationships among changes in abundance, evenness and richness arise, and how they can break down. We then examined interdependencies between changes in abundance, evenness and richness in more than 1100 assemblages sampled either through time or across space. As predicted, richness changes were greatest when abundance and evenness changed in the same direction, and countervailing changes in abundance and evenness acted to constrain the magnitude of changes in species richness. Site-to-site changes in abundance, evenness, and richness were often decoupled, and pairwise relationships between changes in these components across assemblages were weak. In contrast, changes in species richness and relative abundance were strongly correlated for assemblages varying through time. Temporal changes in local biodiversity showed greater inertia and stronger relationships between the component changes when compared to site-to-site variation. Local variation in assemblage diversity was rarely due to a passive sample from a more or less static species abundance distribution. Instead, changing species relative abundances often dominated local variation in diversity. Moreover, how changing relative abundances combined with changes to total abundance frequently determined the magnitude of richness changes. Embracing the interdependencies between changing abundance, evenness and richness can provide new information for better understanding biodiversity change in the Anthropocene.
14
The categories of this paper are: biophysics
3
The categories of this paper are: evolutionary
0
The categories of this paper are: genetics
25
The categories of this paper are: bioengineering
28
The categories of this paper are: communication
31
The categories of this paper are: paleontology
6
The categories of this paper are: plant
29
The categories of this paper are: education
17
The categories of this paper are: molecular
19
The categories of this paper are: epidemiology
18
The categories of this paper are: systems
5
The categories of this paper are: cell
16
The categories of this paper are: microbiology
23
The categories of this paper are: immunology
32
The categories of this paper are: zoology
20
The categories of this paper are: pharmacology