Comparing isotopic niche widths among and within communities: SIBER - Stable Isotope Bayesian Ellipses in R
Trinity College Dublin · University of Exeter · +1 more institution
Abstract
1. The use of stable isotope data to infer characteristics of community structure and niche width of community members has become increasingly common. Although these developments have provided ecologists with new perspectives, their full impact has been hampered by an inability to statistically compare individual communities using descriptive metrics. 2. We solve these issues by reformulating the metrics in a Bayesian framework. This reformulation takes account of uncertainty in the sampled data and naturally incorporates error arising from the sampling process, propagating it through to the derived metrics. 3. Furthermore, we develop novel multivariate ellipse-based metrics as an alternative to the currently…
Citation impact
- FWCI
- 62.62
- Percentile
- 100%
- References
- 47
Authors
4Topics & keywords
- Ellipse
- Bayesian probability
- Computer science
- Convex hull
- Inference
- Niche
- Bayesian inference
- Data mining
- Life in Land