Partitioning the temporal changes in abundance‐based beta diversity into loss and gain components

Abstract

Abstract Ecologists have long recognized that the losses and gains in local species abundances can either decrease or increase spatial beta diversity, phenomena often referred to as biotic homogenization and differentiation, respectively. However, quantifying such dynamic impacts of species abundances on beta diversity has remained a methodological challenge. Here, we develop a numerical method to additively partition the temporal changes in beta diversity into distinct components that reflect the losses and gains in local species abundances. Our method is based on Ružička and Bray–Curtis indices and the normalized abundance‐based Whittaker's beta diversity. The temporal changes in these measures are partitioned into components that represent biotic homogenization and differentiation driven by abundance losses and gains at both species and community levels. Application of the method to a Swedish fish community dataset revealed decreases in beta diversity between 1990 and 2018. The homogenization of fish communities was explained by gains, but not losses, in species abundances across sites. Species‐level partitioning further showed that the homogenization was largely caused by the increased population sizes of a particular species in sites where it was already present. The results highlight that our partitioning method effectively identifies local population and community processes embedded in regional biodiversity patterns. We believe that explicit analyses of the losses and gains in species abundances should bring deeper insights into the dynamics of beta diversity.