Incorporating intraspecific trait variation into functional diversity: impacts of selective logging on birds in Borneo

As conservation increasingly recognizes the importance of species’ functional roles in ecosystem processes, studies are shifting away from measuring species richness towards measures that account for the functional differences between species in a community. These functional diversity (FD) indices have received much recent attention and refinement, but their greatest limitation remains their inability to incorporate information about intraspecific trait variation (ITV).
We use an individual-based model to account for ITV when calculating the functional diversity of two avian communities in Borneo; one in primary (unlogged) forest and one in selectively logged forest. We deal with the scarcity of trait data for individual species by developing a simulation approach, taking data from the literature where necessary. Using a bootstrapping procedure, we produce a range of ecologically feasible FD values taking account of ITV for five commonly used FD indices, and we quantify the confidence ...