Ordination of measures of biodiversity in reduced space: sense or nonsense?
Lyashevska, O.; Farnsworth, K. (2010). Ordination of measures of biodiversity in reduced space: sense or nonsense? CM Documents - ICES, CM 2010(Q:06). ICES: Copenhagen. 6 pp.
Part of: ICES CM Documents - ICES. ICES: Copenhagen. ISSN 1015-4744
Biodiversity measures the degree of difference within biological systems. Ideally, a single measure would unify biodiversity assessments across science. Given the multidimensional nature of biodiversity, in practice, we search for a minimal necessary and sufficient set (M∗ ) of metrics. Starting with a decomposition of biodiversity indices, we constructed the manifold permutation matrix from which M∗ must be found. Simulated ecological communities were generated from lists of benthic marine species found around Ireland and selected by taxonomic sampling. We tested the sensitivity and relationships among various indices of biodiversity using multivariate statistics with a population of simulated communities. The main goal of this analysis is to show how an orthogonal set of marine biodiversity metrics can be formed from which to select the most sensitive and easily measured diversity properties of the community. Having quantified an individual indicator performance, we will test whether currently used biodiversity indicators can be sensibly reduced to a smaller number and what we might miss out by doing it. Modelling results of this kind will help make practical the measuring of biodiversity in marine ecosystems, in line with ICES mission.
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