A multiple-site similarity measure.
Similarity measures are among the most intuitive and common measures for comparing two or more sites, or samples, with respect to their species overlap. A restriction of similarity measures is that they are limited to pairwise comparisons even in a multiple-site study. This work presents a multiple-site similarity measure that makes use of information on species shared by more than two sites and avoids the problem of covariance between pairwise similarities in a multiple-site study. Further, we show that our multiple-site similarity measure is related to beta-diversity measures such as Whittaker's beta-diversity. Similarity measures can also be used as descriptors of effective specialization of insects to host species by measuring similarity from host observations. Finally, we show that multiple-site similarity and host specificity are two sides of the same coin.
Diserud
Ola H
OH
Norwegian Institute of Nature Research (NINA), 7485 Trondheim, Norway. ola.diserud@nina.no
Odegaard
Frode
F
D000818:Animals; D044822:Biodiversity; D017753:Ecosystem; D007313:Insecta; D008954:Models, Biological; D010944:Plants / Q000469:parasitology