BioFTF (version 1.2-0)

curvature: Compute the values of the curvature of the beta profile function for each community in every part of the beta domain.

Description

This function provides the values of the curvature of the beta profile for each part of the domain. The curvature reflects the community composition; in particular, if we consider communities with different numbers of species, the curvature is a good indicator of the lack of balance among species. Great levels of curvature highlights high imbalance among different species and vice-versa.

Usage

curvature(x,n)

Arguments

x

A data matrix with the abundance of the species (the rows are the communities and the columns indicate the species living in a community). The user can freely choose to use the absolute or relative frequencies.

n

The number of points of the domain [-1,1] that the user wants to consider in computing the functional tools. It is suggested to choose a number in the interval [3,10000] because a value of less than 3 has little sense; indeed, the major indices of biodiversity are the richness index, the index of Shannon and the index of Simpson (that we get for beta equal to -1, 0, +1, respectively). On the other hand, a value greater than 10000 is not very interesting because with a value of approximately 100 we already have a good approximation. The examples provided in this package always divide the domain into 20 intervals. The default value is n=20.

Source

ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING THROUGH FUNCTIONAL BIODIVERSITY TOOLS - T. Di Battista, F. Fortuna, F. Maturo - Ecological Indicators (2016) 60, 237-247 - online (2015). DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolind.2015.05.056. PARAMETRIC FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE FOR FISH BIODIVERSITY ASSESSMENT - T. Di Battista, F. Fortuna, F. Maturo - Journal of Environmental Informatics. Special issue of Marine and Freshwater Environmental Engineering and Management, Journal of Environmental Informatics. In press.

Examples

curvature(x,20)