To effectively address biodiversity loss, it is essential to prioritize conservation efforts by identifying areas of high conservation value. Ecological uniqueness is a valuable metric for this purpose that decomposes beta diversity into local contributions to beta diversity (LCBD), thereby measuring the contribution of each site within a region to overall biodiversity variation. LCBD has been used extensively to evaluate ecological uniqueness from community composition data, but biodiversity is a multifaceted concept, and community-based ecological uniqueness may not capture the full range of ecological uniqueness occurring at other levels of biological organization. We investigated ecological uniqueness estimates derived from community and species population levels in a watershed of south-central Chile and analyzed their responses to water and habitat quality variables. Ecological uniqueness was estimated at the community level from fish and macroinvertebrate assemblages and at the population level using genetic and morphological data gathered for two invertebrates, the gastropod Chilina dombeiana and the water bug Aquarius chilensis. Our results revealed low spatial congruence between the levels of ecological uniqueness calculated for these different biodiversity components, with mismatches occurring among sites with high LCBD values. Water and habitat quality were major drivers of beta diversity in this watershed, accounting for 43.8% to 74.3% of the spatial variation in LCBDs, and their effects differed among the ecological uniqueness estimates. Overall, our results underscore the idiosyncratic nature of ecological uniqueness metrics, emphasizing the importance of using multiple components of biodiversity to guide conservation actions.

为了有效解决生物多样性丧失问题，必须通过确定具有高保护价值的地区来优先考虑保护工作。为此，生态独特性是一个有价值的指标，它将β多样性分解为局部对β多样性的贡献（LCBD），从而衡量区域内每个地点对总体生物多样性变化的贡献。LCBD 已被广泛用于根据群落组成数据评估生态独特性，但生物多样性是一个多方面的概念，基于群落的生态独特性可能无法捕获发生在生物组织其他层面的生态独特性的全部范围。我们调查了根据智利中南部流域的群落和物种种群水平得出的生态独特性估计，并分析了它们对水和栖息地质量变量的响应。在群落水平上根据鱼类和大型无脊椎动物组合以及在种群水平上利用两种无脊椎动物（腹足动物）收集的遗传和形态数据来估计生态独特性。Chilina dombeana和水虫Aquarius chilensis。我们的结果显示，为这些不同的生物多样性组成部分计算的生态独特性水平之间的空间一致性较低，在具有高 LCBD 值的地点之间发生不匹配。水和生境质量是该流域β多样性的主要驱动因素，占LCBD空间变异的43.8%至74.3%，其影响在生态独特性估计之间存在差异。总体而言，我们的结果强调了生态独特性指标的特殊性，强调了利用生物多样性的多个组成部分来指导保护行动的重要性。