NERC-MOST Biodiversity change: integrating taxonomic, phylogenetic and functional diversity

全球变暖、环境变化/退化和人类活动对世界生物多样性造成了前所未有的威胁。如何量化和估计生物多样性的变化--生物多样性是如何随着时间的推移而变化的--已经成为生物学、生态学、进化、环境科学、生物信息学和相关研究领域最紧迫的问题之一。需要具有良好的数学/统计特性并支持关于多样性的生物学推理的稳健和有意义的多样性措施。到目前为止，大多数努力都是为了量化分类多样性--即物种的相对丰度和组成。然而，现在人们认识到，生物多样性具有多个层面，也必须考虑到系统发育和功能多样性。幸运的是，我们在了解系统发育和广泛收集物种特征方面取得了显着进展，为衡量和评估生物多样性变化的创新方法打开了大门。与此同时，这是一项复杂的挑战；生态学家和数学家/统计学家之间的合作对于解决这一挑战至关重要。该项目将以一种新的合作方式将世界各国的生物多样性评估专家聚集在一起。其目标是建立一个综合的数学和统计框架，以量化和估计分类、系统发育和功能多样性的变化，重点是生物时间数据库。这项工作的重点将是生态组装，以及它们如何随着时间的推移而变化。项目合作伙伴是桑德拉·迪亚兹(阿根廷)，她是量化功能多样性的世界领导者，以及Anne Chao(领导这项工作的最主要部分)，她以其对生物多样性量化的统计贡献而享誉全球。他们将与英国(圣安德鲁斯)团队(Anne Magurran和Maria Dornelas)合作，后者率先在分类多样性中量化生物多样性变化。新的方法将能够根据生物多样性的所有三个维度(分类、功能、系统发育)，对阿尔法、贝塔和伽马多样性的变化进行严格的分析。进入BioTime数据库(Biotime.st-andrews.ac.uk)我们还将开发适当的用户友好的自我口译软件，并提供在线版本，并维护一个网站，介绍在该项目中开发的所有软件和统计工具。通过向博士后提供一些短期访问奖学金，他们将有机会从事分析的关键部分，我们将扩大合作的全球覆盖范围。研讨会将为传播研究成果和确保合作的未来提供进一步的机会。因此，该项目将在过去没有机会合作的研究人员之间建立牢固的合作伙伴关系，同时为紧迫的生态挑战提供创新的解决方案。

Global warming, environmental change/degradation and human activities have led to an unprecedented threat to the world's biodiversity. How to quantify and estimate biodiversity change - how biodiversity is changing over time - has become one of the most pressing issues in biology, ecology, evolution, environmental science, bioinformatics, and related research fields. Robust and meaningful diversity measures that possess good mathematical/statistical properties and support biological reasoning about diversity are required. To date, most of the effort has been directed towards quantifying taxonomic diversity - i.e. species relative abundance and composition. However, it is now recognized that biodiversity has multiple dimensions and that it is essential to consider phylogenetic and functional diversity as well. Fortunately, remarkable progress in our understanding of phylogenies and the extensive collection of species traits opens the door to innovative approaches to the measurement and assessment of biodiversity change. At the same time, this is a complex challenge; collaboration among ecologists and mathematicians/statisticians is essential to tackle it. This project will bring together world experts in the assessment of biodiversity, in a new collaboration. Its goal is to develop an integrated mathematical and statistical framework to quantify and estimate changes in taxonomic, phylogenetic and functional diversity, focusing on the BioTIME database. The focus of the work will be ecological assemblages, and how they change through time. Project partners are Sandra Diaz (Argentina), a world leader in quantifying functional diversity, and Anne Chao (leading the MOST component of the work) who is globally renowned for her statistical contributions to the quantification of biodiversity. They will collaborate with the UK (St Andrews) team (Anne Magurran and Maria Dornelas) who have pioneered the quantification of biodiversity change in taxonomic diversity. The new methodology will permit rigorous analysis of diversity changes for alpha, beta and gamma diversities based on all three dimensions of biodiversity (taxonomic, functional, phylogenetic). Access to the BioTIME database (biotime.st-andrews.ac.uk), currently the world's largest repository of assemblage time series, will provide a proof of concept of the methodology. We will also develop appropriate user-friendly, self-interpreting software, complete with online versions, and maintain a website featuring all software and statistical tools developed in this project. By offering a number of short visiting fellowships to postdocs, who will have an opportunity to work on key components of the analyses, we will increase the global reach of the collaboration. A workshop will provide a further opportunity to disseminate findings and secure the future of the collaboration. The project will thus forge a strong partnership between researchers who have not had the opportunity to work together in the past, while providing innovative solutions to an urgent ecological challenge.