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Related Experiment Videos

Null model analysis of species nestedness patterns.

Werner Ulrich1, Nicholas J Gotelli

  • 1Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Department of Animal Ecology, Gagarina 9, 87-100 Toruń, Poland. ulrichw@uni.torun.pl

Ecology
|July 25, 2007
PubMed
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Nestedness, a pattern where small ecological communities are subsets of larger ones, is often misidentified. This study found specific metrics and algorithms improve accuracy, revealing true nestedness occurs less frequently than previously thought.

Area of Science:

  • Ecology
  • Biogeography
  • Statistical Modeling

Background:

  • Nestedness describes ecological communities where smaller ones are subsets of larger ones.
  • Detecting nestedness in presence-absence data is challenging due to metric choice and null model algorithms.
  • Previous studies often overestimated the frequency of nestedness.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To evaluate the statistical performance of eight nestedness metrics and six null model algorithms.
  • To identify reliable methods for detecting nestedness in ecological matrices.
  • To reassess the actual frequency of nestedness in empirical ecological data.

Main Methods:

  • Tested eight nestedness metrics and six null model algorithms.
  • Used benchmark datasets of 200 random and 200 passive-sampling-generated nested matrices.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Reanalyzed 288 empirical ecological matrices.

    • Main Results:

    • The fixed-row and fixed-column totals algorithm is robust but conservative.
    • The matrix temperature metric showed poor statistical properties.
    • Brualdi and Sanderson discrepancy index and Cutler's index performed best.
    • The true frequency of nested matrices is estimated to be between 10% and 40%.

    Conclusions:

    • The choice of metric and null model significantly impacts nestedness detection.
    • Brualdi and Sanderson and Cutler's indices with the fixed-fixed algorithm offer a conservative and reliable test for nestedness.
    • The prevalence of nestedness in ecological communities is lower than previously reported, highlighting the need for rigorous statistical evaluation.