title: Parametric scaling from species to growth-form diversity: an interesting analogy with multifractal functions.
abstract: We propose a measure of divergence from species to life-form diversity aimed at summarizing the ecological similarity among different plant communities without losing information on traditional taxonomic diversity. First, species and life-form relative abundances within a given plant community are determined. Next, using Rényi's generalized entropy, the diversity profiles of the analyzed community are computed both from species and life-form relative abundances. Finally, the speed of decrease from species to life-form diversity is obtained by combining the outcome of both profiles. Interestingly, the proposed measure shows some formal analogies with multifractal functions developed in statistical physics for the analysis of spatial patterns. As an application for demonstration, a small data set from a plant community sampled in the archaeological site of Paestum (southern Italy) is used.
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant Biology, University of Rome 'La Sapienza', Piazzale Aldo Moro 5, 00185 Rome, Italy. carlo.ricotta@uniroma l.it
authors.forename: Carlo
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Ricotta
authors.forename: Alessandra
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Pacini
authors.forename: Giancarlo
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Avena
mesh_terms: D017709:Fractals; D010944:Plants / Q000145:classification*; D013045:Species Specificity