The distance decay of similarity in ecological communities

Biological similartiy typically decreases with geographical distance. Despite the recent attention to the distance decay relationship, there is no consensus on how the relationship varies across organism groups, geographic gradients and environments. We first conducted a quantitative meta‐analysis of 401 distance decay relationships across a wide range of organisms, ecosystems and geographical gradients, and then united the effects of categorical and continuous variables on the rate of distance decay using a general linear model (GLM). As effect sizes we used the similarity at one km distance (initial similarity) and the distance that halves the similarity from its value at one km distance (halving distance).…

• AO
  Academy of Finland