Size change, shape change, and the growth space of a community

Spencer, Matthew (2015) Size change, shape change, and the growth space of a community. JOURNAL OF THEORETICAL BIOLOGY, 369. pp. 23-41.

Text __Client_H$_grants_RSBDec11_writing_jtbrevision.pdf - Unspecified Download (575kB)

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
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:	Author Publisher
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/2004479