Spencer, Matthew
(2015)
Size change, shape change, and the growth space of a community.
JOURNAL OF THEORETICAL BIOLOGY, 369.
pp. 23-41.
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Abstract
Measures of biodiversity change such as the Living Planet Index describe proportional change in the abundance of a typical species, which can be thought of as change in the size of a community. Here, I discuss the orthogonal concept of change in relative abundances, which I refer to as shape change. To be logically consistent, a measure of the rate of shape change should be scaling invariant (have the same value for all data with the same vector of proportional change over a given time interval), but existing measures do not have this property. I derive a new, scaling invariant measure. I show that this new measure and existing measures of biodiversity change such as the Living Planet Index describe different aspects of dynamics. I show that neither body size nor environmental variability need affect the rate of shape change. I extend the measure to deal with colonizations and extinctions, using the surreal number system. I give examples using data on hoverflies in a garden in Leicester, UK, and the higher plant community of Surtsey. I hypothesize that phylogenetically restricted assemblages will show a higher proportion of size change than diverse communities.
Item Type: | Article |
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Uncontrolled Keywords: | Aitchison distance, Community dynamics, Per capita growth, Succession, Surreal numbers |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Admin |
Date Deposited: | 08 Jan 2015 10:18 |
Last Modified: | 15 Dec 2022 15:29 |
DOI: | 10.1016/j.jtbi.2015.01.002 |
Related URLs: | |
URI: | https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/2004479 |