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

Community Ecology volume 9, pages 11–16 (2008)Cite this article

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.

Abbreviations

FDD:

Functional Diversity based on Dendrograms

FDM:

Functional Diversity based on Minimum spanning trees

MST:

Minimum Spanning Tree

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Affiliations

  1. Department of Plant Biology, University of Rome “La Sapienza”, Piazzale Aldo Moro 5, 00185, Rome, Italy

    C. Ricotta

  2. Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL, Research Unit Ecosystem Boundaries, Via Belsoggiorno 22, 6500, Bellinzona, Switzerland

    M. Moretti

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  1. C. Ricotta
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  2. M. Moretti
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Correspondence to C. Ricotta.

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Ricotta, C., Moretti, M. Quantifying functional diversity with graph-theoretical measures: advantages and pitfalls. COMMUNITY ECOLOGY 9, 11–16 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1556/ComEc.9.2008.1.2

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Keywords

  • Clustering
  • Minimum spanning tree
  • Pair-wise species distances