Partitioning the turnover and nestedness components of beta diversity

ABSTRACT Aim Beta diversity (variation of the species composition of assemblages) may reflect two different phenomena, spatial species turnover and nestedness of assemblages, which result from two antithetic processes, namely species replacement and species loss, respectively. The aim of this paper is to provide a unified framework for the assessment of beta diversity, disentangling the contribution of spatial turnover and nestedness to beta‐diversity patterns. Innovation I derive an additive partitioning of beta diversity that provides the two separate components of spatial turnover and nestedness underlying the total amount of beta diversity. I propose two families of measures of beta diversity for pairwise…