Theory, Statistics, and Software for the Additive Partitioning of Species Diversity Across Multiple Scales

这项研究将开发在不同生境、景观和地区划分生物多样性所需的理论基础、统计方法和计算机软件。随着人类活动继续影响生物多样性，有必要评估自然和人类改变的生境、景观和区域之间的物种多样性差异。拟议的研究将以新的方式发展旧的物种多样性概念，提供一个新的分析和统计框架，以了解多个尺度上的物种多样性模式。将开发一个全面的软件程序(PARTITION)，根据实地数据计算物种多样性的PARTITION。接下来，我们将使用物种多样性和物种特征的生态模式来解释和预测不同种类的多样性划分。最后，将使用这些方法对几个数据集进行分析，以证明多样性划分对于理论和应用生态问题的有效性。这项研究还有几个更广泛的影响。它将为生态学家、保护生物学家和研究经理提供一个亟需的软件包，他们每天都在做出保护物种多样性的决定。从理论上讲，这将增强我们对物种多样性的基本理解。这项研究将培训学生物种多样性的理论和测量，以及多样性数据库的统计分析和管理。这一培训将在理论和应用生态学的交界处推进本科教学。最后，这项研究的结果将提供如何在景观中划分多样性的标准衡量标准，以防止在全球环境变化的情况下生物多样性的丧失。

This study will develop the theoretical basis, the statistical methods, and the computer software needed to partition biodiversity across habitats, landscapes and regions. As human activities continue to influence biodiversity, there is a need to assess how species diversity differs among natural and human-altered habitats, landscapes, and regions. The proposed research will develop older species diversity concepts in novel ways by providing a new analytical and statistical framework for understanding patterns of species diversity across multiple scales. A comprehensive software program (PARTITION) will be developed to calculate species diversity partitions from field data. Ecological patterns in species diversity and in species traits will next be used to suggest explanations for, and to predict, different kinds of diversity partitions. Finally, several data sets will be analyzed using these methods to demonstrate the usefulness of diversity partitioning to theoretical and applied ecological problems. There are several broader impacts of this research. It will provide a much needed software package to ecologists, conservation biologists and research managers who make daily decisions to conserve species diversity. From a theoretical perspective, it will enhance our basic understanding of species diversity. The study will train students in the theory and the measurement of species diversity, along with statistical analyses and management of diversity databases. This training will advance undergraduate teaching at the interface of theoretical and applied ecology. Finally, the results from this study will provide a standard measure of how diversity is partitioned across landscapes, to prevent loss of biodiversity in the face of global environmental change.