As ecological patterns are scale dependent, making decisions about sampling design critical. In the context of community assembly, many metrics have been developed to quantify species segregation and aggregation, of which the checkerboard metric (C-score) and the V-ratio are widely used. Using data that describe the spatial pattern of four species-rich, Mediterranean-climate, shrubland communities, we confirm the scale dependence of these metrics. At three of the four sites, we observed that the co-occurrence metrics monotonically increased across all the spatial grains we assessed; at the other site, the previously reported hump-shaped relationship between spatial grain and co-occurrence metrics was observed. The spatial grain at which measures of co-occurrence peaked varied across the plant communities and taxa and increased with exclusion of the less frequently sampled species. Inferences about community assembly using co-occurrence metrics must recognise their inherent scale dependence, and the inferential tools developed in spatial point pattern analysis may facilitate this task.

由于生态模式取决于规模，因此对抽样设计的决策至关重要。在社区大会的背景下，已经开发了许多度量标准来量化物种的隔离和聚集，其中棋盘格度量（C评分）和V-比率被广泛使用。使用描述四个物种丰富的，地中海气候的灌木丛社区的空间格局的数据，我们确认了这些指标的规模依赖性。在四个站点中的三个站点上，我们观察到在我们评估的所有空间颗粒上，共现度量单调增加。在另一个站点，观察到先前报道的空间纹理与共现度量之间的驼峰形关系。共生措施达到峰值的空间谷物在植物群落和分类单元中各不相同，并且随着不经常采样的物种的排除而增加。使用共现度量标准进行的关于社区组装的推论必须认识到其固有的尺度依赖性，而在空间点模式分析中开发的推论工具可能会促进这项任务。