Functional Diversity Plays a Role in Driving Beta-Diversity-Or Does It?

Patrick and Brown (2018) suggest that functional diversity of the species pool has an important role in generating beta-diversity. Using a combination of path analysis and model selection, they ostensibly provide support for this hypothesis; however, they neglect to put theory and modeling into statistical and ecological context. Importantly, they present results that are not reproducible. Here, I present a re-analysis of their data with alternative hypotheses. I conclude that the drivers of beta-diversity are variable, with functional diversity typically having a reduced, if any, role compared to consistently stronger roles played by gamma-diversity or environmental variation on structuring beta-diversity.Here I provided the data associated with the re-analysis. I also provide my R code and workspace for instant evaluation of my re-analysis and to allow for readers to reproduce the results.Citation for the data:Patrick, C. J., and B. L. Brown. 2018. Data from: Species pool functional diversity plays a hidden role in generating beta-diversity. American Naturalist, Dryad Digital Repository, http://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.5n0c3.Citation for Patrick and Brown (2018):Patrick, C. J., and B. L. Brown. 2018. Species pool functional diversity plays a hidden role in generating beta-diversity. The American Naturalist 191: E159-E170.