PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Carlo Ricotta
AU  - László Szeidl
AU  - Sandrine Pavoine
TI  - Towards a unifying framework for diversity and dissimilarity coefficients
AID  - 10.1101/2021.01.23.427893
DP  - 2021 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2021.01.23.427893
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/01/25/2021.01.23.427893.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/01/25/2021.01.23.427893.full
AB  - Diversity and dissimilarity within and between species assemblages have now been studied for more than half a century by community ecologists in relation to their connections with ecosystem functioning. However, a generalized framework that puts diversity and dissimilarity coefficients under the same formal umbrella is still lacking. In this paper, we show that generalized means represent an effective tool to develop a unifying formulation for the construction of a large array of parametric diversity and dissimilarity measures. These measures include some of the classical diversity coefficients, such as the Shannon entropy, the Gini-Simpson index or the parametric diversity of Patil and Taillie, together with a large number of dissimilarity coefficients of the Bray-Curtis family and can be further extended to the measurement of functional and phylogenetic differences within and between plots.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.