A multiple-site dissimilarity measure for species presence/absence data and its relationship with nestedness and turnover

Multiple-site dissimilarity may be caused by two opposite processes of meta-community organization, such as species nestedness and turnover. Therefore, discriminating among these contributions is necessary for linking multiple-site dissimilarity to ecosystem functioning. This paper introduces a measure of multiple-site dissimilarity or beta diversity for presence/absence data that is based on information on species absences from the species × sites matrix. It is also shown that the newly proposed dissimilarity index can be additively partitioned into species nestedness and turnover.