The Forest, the Trees, and the Phylo-diversity Jungle

Abstract

The joint use of phylogenetic trees and ecological data has proven useful for many aspects of ecology. However, there are a multitude of phylo-diversity metrics with complex interdependencies and mathematical redundancies (the so-called jungle of metrics). Several recentpapers have been trying to map this jungle but appear at a first glance to contradict each other. We suggest that these contradictory results are in fact complementary and reflect two approaches to understand diversity metrics: the first focuses on general mathematical properties,the second focuses on assessing metric performance in relation to particular questions.In this manuscript, we discuss the complementarity of the two approaches and in particular how recent papers fit into this categorisation.