Jackson, Andrew L. and Inger, Richard and Parnell, Andrew and Bearhop, Stuart (2011) Comparing isotopic niche widths among and within communities: SIBER - Stable Isotope Bayesian Ellipses in R. Journal of Animal Ecology, 80 (3). pp. 595-602. ISSN 0021-8790

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Abstract

1. The use of stable isotope data to infer characteristics of community structure and niche width of community members has become increasingly common. Although these developments have provided ecologists with new perspectives, their full impact has been hampered by an inability to statistically compare individual communities using descriptive metrics. 2. We solve these issues by reformulating the metrics in a Bayesian framework. This reformulation takes account of uncertainty in the sampled data and naturally incorporates error arising from the sampling process, propagating it through to the derived metrics. 3. Furthermore, we develop novel multivariate ellipse-based metrics as an alternative to the currently employed Convex Hull methods when applied to single community members. We show that unlike Convex Hulls, the ellipses are unbiased with respect to sample size, and their estimation via Bayesian inference allows robust comparison to be made among data sets comprising different sample sizes. 4. These new metrics, which we call SIBER (Stable Isotope Bayesian Ellipses in R), open up more avenues for direct comparison of isotopic niches across communities. The computational code to calculate the new metrics is implemented in the free-to-download package Stable Isotope Analysis for the R statistical environment.

Item Type:	Article
Keywords:	Bayesian Inference; community ecology; R statistics program; statistical methods; trophic niche width;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Science and Engineering > Mathematics and Statistics Faculty of Science and Engineering > Research Institutes > Hamilton Institute Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Institutes > Irish Climate Analysis and Research Units, ICARUS
Item ID:	19121
Identification Number:	https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2656.2011.01806.x
Depositing User:	Andrew Parnell
Date Deposited:	30 Oct 2024 12:34
Journal or Publication Title:	Journal of Animal Ecology
Publisher:	Wiley
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	Publisher
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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