What do functional diversity, redundancy, rarity, and originality actually measure? A theoretical guide for ecologists and conservationists

IF 3.1 3区环境科学与生态学 Q2 ECOLOGY

Ecological Complexity Pub Date : 2025-03-01 DOI:10.1016/j.ecocom.2025.101116

Carlo Ricotta , Sandrine Pavoine

引用次数: 0

Abstract

Functional diversity, redundancy, rarity, and originality (or distinctiveness) are fundamental concepts in ecology and conservation biology. Despite their frequent use, the precise meaning and relationships between these measures are often unclear. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive theoretical framework to elucidate what each of these measures captures and how they interrelate. By integrating traditional community-level diversity metrics with species-level specificity measures derived from fuzzy set theory, we bridge the gap between these concepts. Our framework reveals that while all four measures address distinct aspects of community-level and species-level functional resemblance, they can all be traced back to a common conceptual and formal background. This guide is intended to help ecologists and conservationists understand the meaning of these measures and apply them more effectively in their research and conservation strategies.

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功能多样性、冗余性、稀有性和独创性（或独特性）是生态学和保护生物学的基本概念。尽管这些概念经常被使用，但其确切含义和相互之间的关系往往并不明确。本文旨在提供一个全面的理论框架，以阐明这些度量指标各自的含义及其相互关系。通过将传统的群落级多样性指标与源自模糊集理论的物种级特异性指标相结合，我们弥合了这些概念之间的差距。我们的框架显示，虽然所有四种测量方法都涉及群落水平和物种水平功能相似性的不同方面，但它们都可以追溯到共同的概念和形式背景。本指南旨在帮助生态学家和保护工作者理解这些测量方法的含义，并在研究和保护策略中更有效地应用它们。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Ecological Complexity 环境科学-生态学

CiteScore

7.10

自引率

0.00%

发文量

审稿时长

3 months

期刊介绍： Ecological Complexity is an international journal devoted to the publication of high quality, peer-reviewed articles on all aspects of biocomplexity in the environment, theoretical ecology, and special issues on topics of current interest. The scope of the journal is wide and interdisciplinary with an integrated and quantitative approach. The journal particularly encourages submission of papers that integrate natural and social processes at appropriately broad spatio-temporal scales. Ecological Complexity will publish research into the following areas: • All aspects of biocomplexity in the environment and theoretical ecology • Ecosystems and biospheres as complex adaptive systems • Self-organization of spatially extended ecosystems • Emergent properties and structures of complex ecosystems • Ecological pattern formation in space and time • The role of biophysical constraints and evolutionary attractors on species assemblages • Ecological scaling (scale invariance, scale covariance and across scale dynamics), allometry, and hierarchy theory • Ecological topology and networks • Studies towards an ecology of complex systems • Complex systems approaches for the study of dynamic human-environment interactions • Using knowledge of nonlinear phenomena to better guide policy development for adaptation strategies and mitigation to environmental change • New tools and methods for studying ecological complexity