测量生物多样性的传统方法在判断海洋生态时，很可能错过一些重要的方面，从而在热带水域保护工作上导致错误的关注方向。
为了量化一个特定区域的生物多样性，研究人员常通过观察测量生活在这一区域的不同物种的数量加以判断。但在近日发表于《自然》杂志上的一篇论文中，澳大利亚塔斯马尼亚大学的生态学家Rick Stuart-Smith和他的同事展示了一种截然不同的测量方法。
利用潜水员在全球1844个观测地点获得的4357组对珊瑚礁鱼类的调查数据，研究小组认为，在衡量某一特定区域不同物种的丰富性和“功能特征”时，不能仅仅通过每个地区物种的数量进行判断，还要考虑到这些地区物种的“功能多样性”，例如：这些生物的食物链结构以及它们栖息地周边的环境。Stuart-Smith称这种新方法是对不同多样性概念的有益补充。
Stuart-Smith说：“这种方法是一种行之有效的测量办法，因为与传统的生物多样性判断相比，它与生态进程的关系更加紧密。人们通常认为，在特定的系统中，更多的物种能够转化出更多的自然功能，然而特定的物种并不是在任何系统中都会起到相同的作用，与成千上百的种群相比，通常在这些物种中，可能只有一两个物种一直担任相同的使命。”
当研究人员绘制标准的物种丰富度图册时，热带水域物种高度多样化的经典模式与较冷却水域中相对较少的生物多样性会进行相互对比。但是，当研究人员利用上述办法测量功能多样性时，图册在热带地区显示的热点要少很多，而热带区域以外的一些区域相比许多热带观测点则表现出更大的生物功能多样性。 研究人员说，这种新方法可能有助于识别那些之前没有认识到但是需要进行保护的区域（生物谷Bioon.com）。
生物谷推荐的英文摘要
Nature doi:10.1038/nature12529
Integrating abundance and functional traits reveals new global hotspots of fish diversity
Rick D. Stuart-Smith，Amanda E. Bates，Jonathan S. Lefcheck，J. Emmett Duffy，Susan C. Baker，Russell J. Thomson，Jemina F. Stuart-Smith，Nicole A. Hill，Stuart J. Kininmonth，Laura Airoldi，Mikel A. Becerro，Stuart J. Campbell，Terence P. Dawson，Sergio A. Navarrete，German A. Soler，Elisabeth M. A. Strain，Trevor J. Willis & Graham J. Edgar
Species richness has dominated our view of global biodiversity patterns for centuries1， 2. The dominance of this paradigm is reflected in the focus by ecologists and conservation managers on richness and associated occurrence-based measures for understanding drivers of broad-scale diversity patterns and as a biological basis for management3， 4. However， this is changing rapidly， as it is now recognized that not only the number of species but the species present， their phenotypes and the number of individuals of each species are critical in determining the nature and strength of the relationships between species diversity and a range of ecological functions (such as biomass production and nutrient cycling)5. Integrating these measures should provide a more relevant representation of global biodiversity patterns in terms of ecological functions than that provided by simple species counts. Here we provide comparisons of a traditional global biodiversity distribution measure based on richness with metrics that incorporate species abundances and functional traits. We use data from standardized quantitative surveys of 2，473 marine reef fish species at 1，844 sites， spanning 133 degrees of latitude from all ocean basins， to identify new diversity hotspots in some temperate regions and the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean. These relate to high diversity of functional traits amongst individuals in the community (calculated using Rao’s Q6)， and differ from previously reported patterns in functional diversity and richness for terrestrial animals， which emphasize species-rich tropical regions only7， 8. There is a global trend for greater evenness in the number of individuals of each species， across the reef fish species observed at sites (‘community evenness’)， at higher latitudes. This contributes to the distribution of functional diversity hotspots and contrasts with well-known latitudinal gradients in richness2， 4. Our findings suggest that the contribution of species diversity to a range of ecosystem functions varies over large scales， and imply that in tropical regions， which have higher numbers of species， each species contributes proportionally less to community-level ecological processes on average than species in temperate regions. Metrics of ecological function usefully complement metrics of species diversity in conservation management， including when identifying planning priorities and when tracking changes to biodiversity values.
