Various biodiversity indicators, such as species richness, total abundance and species diversity indices, have been developed to capture the state of ecological community over space and time. As biodiversity is a multifaceted concept, it is important to understand the dimension of biodiversity reflected by each indicator for successful biodiversity conservation and management. Here we present a method to characterize and classify biodiversity indicators according to their dynamical similarity and apply the methodology to the monitoring data of a marine fish community under the intermittent anthropogenic warm water discharge. Our analysis reveals that ten biodiversity indicators can be classified into three super-groups that possibly reflect the same dimension of biodiversity. Group I (species richness) with the most robust dynamics to the temperature changes; Group II (species diversity and total abundance) showing an abrupt change in the middle of the monitoring period, presumably due to a change in temperature; Group III (species evenness) with the highest sensitivity to temperature changes. The finding suggests that selecting indicators from different super-groups might help to fully assess biodiversity response to environmental change.