The trinity of ecological contrasts: a case study on rich insect assemblages by means of species, functional and phylogenetic diversity measures

The ‘classical’ concept of species diversity was extended in the last decades into other dimensions focusing on the functional and phylogenetic diversity of communities. These measures are often argued to allow a deeper understanding of the mechanisms shaping community assembly along environmental gradients. Because of practical impediments, thus far only very few studies evaluated the performance of these diversity measures on large empirical data sets. Here, data on species-rich riparian moth communities under different flood regimes and from three different rivers has been used to compare the power of various diversity measures to uncover ecological contrasts.