Disentangling dispersion from mean reveals true heterogeneity-diversity relationships.

ABSTRACT: Understanding the effect of heterogeneity is fundamental to numerous fields. In community ecology, classical theory postulates that habitat heterogeneity determines niche dimensionality and drives biodiversity. However, disparate heterogeneity-diversity relationships have been empirically observed, generating increasingly complex theoretical developments. Here we show that spurious heterogeneity-diversity relationships and subsequent theories arise as artifacts of heterogeneity measures that are mean-biased for bounded continuous variables. To solve this, we derive an alternative mean-independent measure of heterogeneity for beta and gamma distributed variables that disentangles statistical dispersion from mean. Using the mean-independent measure of heterogeneity, true monotonic positive h

SUBMITTER: Pellett C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12480598 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature