Diversity and richness analysis

9 important questions on Diversity and richness analysis

What is species richness?

Number of species (S).
  • Counting species’ presence (not abundance)
  • Often used concept
  • Specific goal for conservation activities: max Nspp
  • How to compare among sites?

Does an uneven sampling & exhaustive list allow for a comparison between number of species?

Yes!

What are the baises/problems with rarefaction?

  1. Assumes species occur randomly in each sample (but species occur clustered in samples)
  2. Cannot take into account the distribution of relative abundances in the whole, larger community (because unknown).
  3. Cannot extrapolate -> how many species are there in total?
  • Higher grades + faster learning
  • Never study anything twice
  • 100% sure, 100% understanding
Discover Study Smart

What are the pitfalls of using ratios (S/N)?

  1. Richness does not increase linearly with sample size
  2. Information about the number of species alone is “meaningless”

What is the solution to tackling pitfalls?

The Chao index.

What is the Chao index?

The larger the number of rare species, the larger the Chao index.
  • relative abundance is important

What is species evenness (equitability)?

The degree to which the relative abundance of individuals among the different species are similar.

What is the Shannon-Wiener H?

Measure of uncertainty with which we can predict the species from a randomly chosen individual.
  • H’ higher -> more diverse enables relative comparison among samples
  • Often used
  • Difficult value; Not: number of species
  • Highly sensitive to sample size & standarization……so…..

What is the Hill-Simpson index?

≈ index for the probability that two randomly selected individuals will not be of the same species.
  • evenness/dominance

The question on the page originate from the summary of the following study material:

  • A unique study and practice tool
  • Never study anything twice again
  • Get the grades you hope for
  • 100% sure, 100% understanding
Remember faster, study better. Scientifically proven.
Trustpilot Logo