Spatial scaling of species diversity - Project Momentos (PTDC/BIA-BIC/5558/2014)
The main assumption of this project is that any description of biodiversity that does not explicitly include species abundances is likely to miss important relationships on how species interact with the environment, assemble into communities, or evolve in time. However, biodiversity is not a fixed quantity, when sample size increases the number of species increases and the species relative abundances change. But if the scaling patterns on the number of species as a function of sample size have been studied thoroughly, those of species abundances have not. The number of species and their abundances are important descriptions of a community, but to fully understand an ecosystem one needs to know how species impact its functioning, i.e., the functional diversity, and this is also a function of sample size. This project aims at answering the question: How do the relative abundance of species and the functional diversity change as a function of sample size? The novelty of our approach lies on the premise that we should focus on the description of how diversity changes as a function of sample size and not on its characterization at one single scale. We use the species abundance distribution (SAD) to describe species relative abundance in a community. A SAD contains information on the number of species, the number of individuals and how these are distributed among species. However, because we are interested in the description of the SADs at several scales, we need to develop methods to describe how the distributions change as function of sample size. Although the research proposed in this project is original, it builds on theoretical and empirical research already published, thus its methods have already been tested and stand on firm ground. It is clear from our previous work, however, that much remains to be done, and it is the objective of this project to fill in those gaps.
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Team
Team
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Papers Published
Papers Published
- Dantas de Miranda, M., Borda-de-Água, L., Pereira, H. M. and Merckx, T. (2019). Species traits shape the relationship between local and regional species abundance distributions. Ecosphere, 10: e02750. doi:10.1002/ecs2.2750
- Alirezazadeh, S., Borda-de-Água, L., Borges, P. A. V., Gabriel, R., Dionisio, F., Pereira, H.M. and Cardoso, P. (2018). Theoretical approach for how species abundance distributions change across scales, 2018 13th APCA International Conference on Control and Soft Computing (CONTROLO), Ponta Delgada, Portugal, 131-136. doi:10.1109/CONTROLO.2018.8514272
- Borges, P.A.V., Cardoso, P., Kreft, H., Whittaker, R.J., Fattorini, S., Emerson, B.C., Gil, A., Gillespie, R.G., Matthews, T.J., Santos, A.M.C., Steinbauer, M.J., Thébaud, C., Ah-Peng, C., Amorim, I.R., Aranda, S.C., Arroz, A.M., Azevedo, J.M., Boieiro, M., Borda-de-Água, L., Carvalho, J.C., Elias, R.B., Fernández-Palacios, J.M., Florencio, M., González-Mancebo, J.M., Heaney, L.R., Hortal, J., Kueffer, C., Lequette, B., Martín-Esquivel, J.L., López, H., Lamelas-López, L., Marcelino, J., Nunes, R., Oromí, P., Patiño, J., Pérez, A.J., Rego, C., Ribeiro, S.P., Rigal, F., Rodrigues, P., Rominger, A.J., Santos-Reis, M., Schaefer, H., Sérgio, C., Serrano, A.R.M., Sim-Sim, M., Stephenson, P.J., Soares, A.O., Strasberg, D., Vanderporten, A., Vieira, V. & Gabriel, R. (2018). A Global Island Monitoring Scheme (GIMS) for the long-term coordinated survey and monitoring of forest biota across islands. Biodiversity and Conservation, 27: 2567-2586. doi:10.1007/s10531-018-1553-7
- Matthews, T.J., Borges, P.A.V., Azevedo, E.B. & Whittaker, R.J. (2017). A biogeographical perspective on species abundance distributions: recent advances and opportunities for future research. Journal of Biogeography, 44: 1705-1710. doi:10.1111/jbi.13008
- Borda-de-Água, L., Whittaker, R. J., Cardoso, P., Rigal, F., Santos, A.M.C., Amorim, I. R., Parmakelis, A., Triantis, K. A., Pereira, H. M. & Borges, P. A. V. (2017) Dispersal ability determines the scaling properties of species abundance distributions: a case study using arthropods from the Azores. Scientific Reports, 7: 3899. doi:10.1038/s41598-017-04126-5
- Borges, P. A. V., Pimentel, C., Brito, M. R., Borda-de-Água, L. & Gabriel, R. (2017) Arthropod diversity patterns in three coastal marshes in Terceira Island (Azores). Arquipélago: Life and Marine Sciences, 34: 61-83.
- García, C. and L. Borda-de-Água, L. (2017). “Extended dispersal kernels in a changing world: insights from statistics of extremes”, Journal of Ecology 105: 63-74. doi:10.1111/1365-2745.12685 [F1000Prime recommended]
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Papers Under Revision
Papers Under Revision
- Alirezazadeh, S. Improvement on Extrapolation of Species Abundance Distribution Across Scales from Moments Across Scales. Submitted to Theoretical Population Biology
- Alirezazadeh, S., Species Area Relationship: Pattern Description with Geometrical Approach. Submitted to Global Ecology and Biogeography
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Book Chapters
Book Chapters
- Borda-de-Água, L. (2019) “The Importance of Scaling in Biodiversity”, in “From Assessing to Conserving Biodiversity” edited by E. Casetta, J. M. Silva and D. Vecchi, Springer, pp. 107-122, 2019. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-10991-2_5.
- Borda-de-Água, L., S. Alirezazadeh, M. Neves, S. P. Hubbell, P. Borges, P. Cardoso, F. Dionísio and H. M. Pereira. In press. “Species Accumulation Curves and Extreme Value Theory”, in “The Species-Area Relationship” edited by T. J. Matthews, K. Triantis and R. J. Whittaker, Cambridge University Press.
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Communications
Communications
- Borda-de-Água, L., S. Alirezazadeh, M. Neves, S. P. Hubbell, P. A. V. Borges, P. Cardoso, F. Dionisio and H. M. Pereira. “Application of Extreme Value Theory to the Study of Species Accumulation Curves”. British Ecological Society, Annual Meeting, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 10-13 December, 2019.
- Borda-de-Água, L., S. Alirezazadeh, M. Neves, S. P. Hubbell, P. A. V. Borges, P. Cardoso, F. Dionisio and H. M. Pereira. “Application of Extreme Value Theory to Species Accumulation Curves”. INForum, Simpósio de Informática. Universidade do Minho, Guimarães, Portugal, 5-6 September, 2019.
- Borda-de-Água, L., S. Alirezazadeh, M. Neves, S. P. Hubbell, P. A. V. Borges, P. Cardoso, F. Dionisio and H. M. Pereira. “Extreme Value Theory as a Tool to Study Biodiversity Patterns”. EEF, Embedding Ecology in Sustainable Development Goals, Lisbon, Portugal, 29 July-6 August, 2019.
- Alirezazadeh, S., L. Borda-de-Água, P. A. V. Borges, G. Rosalina, F. Dionísio, H. M. Pereira and P. Cardoso. "Theoretical Approach for How Species Abundance Distributions Change Across Scales". 13th APCA International Conference on Automatic Control and Soft Computing (CONTROLO), Ponta Delgada, Azores, Portugal, 4-6 June, 2018.
- Borda-de-Água, L. “Application of statistics of extremes to the identification of biodiversity patterns”. 12th Workshop on Statistics, Mathematics and Computation in Honour of Professor Carlos Braumann, Universidade da Beira Interior, Covilhã, Portugal, 9-10 November, 2018.
- Borda-de-Água, L. “Patterns of species diversity in space and time”. XX Encontro nacional dos estudantes de biologia, Aveiro, Portugal, 7-11 April, 2017. [Invited talk]
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First workshop Project “Momentos”
March 26th, 2018
Instituto Superior de Agronomia
Morning session
. General overview of the project
9:45 – 10:00 Luís Borda de Água
. First paper: Dispersal and moments (Scientific reports)
10:00 – 11:00 Luís Borda-de-Água
11:00 – 11:15 Intervalo
. Advancements in forecasting species abundance distributions
11:15 – 12:15 Saeid Alirazazadeh
12:15 – 14:00 Almoço
Afternoon session
. Assessment of the project’s progress and future developments
14:00 – 17:00 Luís Borda-de-Água
First workshop Project “Momentos”
March 26th, 2018
Instituto Superior de Agronomia
Morning session
. General overview of the project
9:45 – 10:00 Luís Borda de Água
. First paper: Dispersal and moments (Scientific reports)
10:00 – 11:00 Luís Borda-de-Água
11:00 – 11:15 Intervalo
. Advancements in forecasting species abundance distributions
11:15 – 12:15 Saeid Alirazazadeh
12:15 – 14:00 Almoço
Afternoon session
. Assessment of the project’s progress and future developments
14:00 – 17:00 Luís Borda-de-Água
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Second workshop Project “Momentos”
March 2nd and 3rd, 2019
Universidade dos Açores
May 2nd Afternoon session
. General overview of the project
14:00 – 15:00 Luís Borda de Água
. Overall progress of the project
15:00 – 17:00 Luís Borda-de-Água
May 3rd Morning session
. Functional diversity across scales
9:00 – 12:00 Saeid Alirazazadeh
12:00 – 14:00 Almoço
Afternoon session
. Overall assessment of the project
14:00 – 17:00 Luís Borda-de-Água
Second workshop Project “Momentos”
March 2nd and 3rd, 2019
Universidade dos Açores
May 2nd Afternoon session
. General overview of the project
14:00 – 15:00 Luís Borda de Água
. Overall progress of the project
15:00 – 17:00 Luís Borda-de-Água
May 3rd Morning session
. Functional diversity across scales
9:00 – 12:00 Saeid Alirazazadeh
12:00 – 14:00 Almoço
Afternoon session
. Overall assessment of the project
14:00 – 17:00 Luís Borda-de-Água