Assessing biodiversity in fragmented landscapes using SLOSS
comparisons
We used SLOSS comparisons (Quinn & Harrison 1988), which juxtapose two
species-area accumulation curves generated from a metacommunity of
species inhabiting a set of patches (Fig. 1-d). The two curves describe
the cumulative number of species as a function of cumulative area,
adding patches either from smallest to largest or from largest to
smallest. From the relative position of the curves, one can infer that
biodiversity increases with habitat fragmentation (small-to-large curve
above large-to-small curve; SS > SL), decreases with
fragmentation (large-to-small curve above small-to-large curve; SL
> SS), or is unrelated to fragmentation (curves cross; SS =
SL). This method for estimating effects of habitat fragmentation on
biodiversity is conservative, because it identifies fragmentation
effects only when they occur consistently across an entire dataset
(Fahrig et al. 2019).