Talk:Beta diversity

The strange thing here is that diversity seems to be totally determined by the presence and absence of species, not on their abundances. So if location A has 100 individuals of species 1 and 1 individual of species 2, and location B has 1 individual of species 1 and 100 of species 2, beta diversity is low according to the measures given here, while in fact the two location are very different in their species compositions. Also, saying beta-diversity works by comparing diversity between places is confusing to me. If location A has a diversity of "12" and location B a diversity of "13" (in whatever way you measure diversity), can we then calculate the beta-diversity by comparing those two numbers? OpenScience (talk) 23:13, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Article needs work
First, there is a distinction between beta diversity as dissimilarity and beta diversity as rate of change. The latter involves (usually) the spatial separation of the two communities, something like distance between midpoints. Let´s call this distance d. Then one can talk of the rate of increase in beta as d increases.

Second, Sorensen index doesn´t measure dissimilarity, it measures similarity. This contradicts the idea of change, of difference. For Sorensen to be a beta diversity one should subtract the formula given here from 1.

Thirdly, maybe there should be reference to other measures, such as the Jaccard distance and Ripley´s K. It is not clear to me how far Wikipedia should go in defining the leading concepts in a scientific discipline, but given the current high profile of diversity studies, there is certainly a good case for including at least the two I  have mentioned, both of which already have Wikipedia  entries anyway.

Fourthly, beta diversity is not at all easy to use in practice (for example, whether high beta is better than low beta is not easy to say in general), nor are the various measures entirely consistent with each other. Somewhere in the intro there should be a warning that for reasons like these, beta diversity is less important in diversity studies than alpha diversity. ---Henri —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.2.241.237 (talk) 17:24, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

This article lacks a clear definition. It provides examples, but it begins with an explanation of who developed this concept, when, and why. It doesn't explicitly state WHAT beta diversity is. Andrewrgross (talk) 17:17, 18 February 2014 (UTC)Andrewrgross

"Measure beta diversity" listed at Redirects for discussion
The redirect [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Measure_beta_diversity&redirect=no Measure beta diversity] has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at  until a consensus is reached. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:42, 17 June 2023 (UTC)