Long-term trends in the phylogenetic and functional diversity of Anatidae in South China coastal wetlands

Species loss has attracted much attention among scientists for more than half a century. However, we have little information on the trends in phylogenetic and functional changes behind the species loss although this information is always asynchronous and important for conservation and management. We measured community trends in Anatidae (ducks and geese) for the last 50 years to quantify trends in phylogenetic and functional diversity patterns coinciding with taxonomic historical dynamics. We used one-way ANOVAs to test if there was a significant historical trend in communities of Anatidae. We characterized taxonomic, phylogenetic and functional diversity of communities. For taxonomic diversity, we used species richness (SR). For phylogenetic diversity, we calculated the standardized effect size of mean pairwise distances (ses.MPD) and the standard effect size of mean nearest taxon distances (ses.MNTD) in communities. For functional diversity, we calculated functional richness (FRic), f...