College of Life Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, 310058, China.
Department of Biological Sciences, University of Toronto-Scarborough, Toronto, Ontario, M1C 1A4, Canada.
Ecology. 2018 Sep;99(9):2103-2112. doi: 10.1002/ecy.2438. Epub 2018 Jul 25.
Incorporating imperfect detection when estimating species richness has become commonplace in the past decade. However, the question of how imperfect detection of species affects estimates of functional and phylogenetic community structure remains untested. We used long-term counts of breeding bird species that were detected at least once on islands in a land-bridge island system, and employed multi-species occupancy models to assess the effects of imperfect detection of species on estimates of bird diversity and community structure by incorporating species traits and phylogenies. Our results showed that taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic diversity were all underestimated significantly as a result of species' imperfect detection, with taxonomic diversity showing the greatest bias. The functional and phylogenetic structure calculated from observed communities were both more clustered than those from the detection-corrected communities due to missed distinct species. The discrepancy between observed and estimated diversity differed according to the measure of biodiversity employed. Our study demonstrates the importance of accounting for species' imperfect detection in biodiversity studies, especially for functional and phylogenetic community ecology, and when attempting to infer community assembly processes. With datasets that allow for detection-corrected community structure, we can better estimate diversity and infer the underlying mechanisms that structure community assembly, and thus make reliable management decisions for the conservation of biodiversity.
在过去十年中，在估计物种丰富度时纳入不完全检测已变得很普遍。然而，物种不完全检测如何影响功能和系统发育群落结构的估计这一问题仍未得到检验。我们使用了在陆桥岛系统中的岛屿上至少检测到一次繁殖鸟类物种的长期计数，并采用多物种占有率模型来评估物种不完全检测对鸟类多样性和群落结构估计的影响，同时纳入了物种特征和系统发育。我们的结果表明，由于物种的不完全检测，分类学、功能和系统发育多样性都被显著低估，其中分类学多样性的偏差最大。由于遗漏了独特的物种，因此从观察到的群落中计算得出的功能和系统发育结构比从检测校正后的群落中计算得出的结构更加聚类。由于采用的生物多样性衡量标准不同，观察到的和估计的多样性之间的差异也不同。我们的研究表明，在生物多样性研究中，特别是在功能和系统发育群落生态学中，以及在尝试推断群落组装过程时，考虑物种的不完全检测非常重要。通过允许进行检测校正后的群落结构的数据集，我们可以更好地估计多样性并推断出构成群落组装的潜在机制，从而为保护生物多样性做出可靠的管理决策。
