Consolidate theoretical predictions regarding the potential informativeness of phylogenetic / functional relationships on trend estimates, particularly in regards to spatial and temporal scales

[nicholasjclark]

No description provided.

[caseyyoungflesh]

Just jotting down some ideas, I would expect:

• Informativeness of phylogenetic/functional relationships will be stronger among resident species (as the same conditions experienced year-round across species) compared to among both residents and migrants or among just migrants. Migrant status is itself a functional trait, but may also determine in which cases other functional traits are most important.

• Functional relationships would be more informative compared to phylogenetic relationships at smaller spatial scales because closely related species at a given location occupy different niches (i.e., have different functional traits). At larger spatial scales, phylogenetic relationships may be more informative, because the functional traits that we have measured do not capture all dimensions of the n-dimensional space (i.e., we have limited data and phylogenetic relationships on large scales may be a better proxy for similar-ness compared to our available functional traits).

• Informativeness of phylogenetic/functional relationships will be higher at smaller spatial scales. All species at a given location are subject to the same conditions (even if they experience those conditions differently). When aggregating to the range-wide level, species are subject to different sets of conditions because ranges do not completely overlap (one location where species A is found but not species B could be subject to a large disturbance which might result in different aggregated responses among those species even if they respond identically to temporal changes in conditions). Then again, the data at a single location may be noisier...