Data and Code for: An index for measuring functional extension and evenness in trait space

Most existing functional diversity indices focus on single specific facet of functional diversity. Although they help scrutinize the details of functional diversity from their own angles, they often present some limitations in estimating functional diversity from a broad perspective. Here we presented a functional extension and evenness (FEE) index that encloses two important aspects of functional diversity. This index is based on a straightforward notion that a community has high diversity when its species are distant from each other in trait space. We quantified the functional diversity by evaluating the overall extension of species traits and interspecific trait differences of a species assemblage in trait space. The concept of minimum spanning tree (MST) of points was adopted to obtain the essential distribution properties for a community in trait space. We integrated the total length of MST branches (extension) and the variation of branch lengths (evenness) into the FEE0 metric, an...