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MINIREVIEW
of species diversity among communities have been proposed, especially for patterns of species richness along
environmental gradients (Whittaker 1960, 1972,
MacArthur 1965, 1972, Pielou 1975, Allan 1975, Routledge 1977, Wilson and Mohler 1983, Wilson and
Shmida 1984, Magurran 1988).
A measure of species diversity should ideally be
nonparametric and statistically accurate. It should be
applicable to any community independent of species
abundance distribution, and should have small bias and
sampling variance in samples of moderate size. An
important property for a diversity measure, first discussed by Lewontin (1972) for genetic diversity, is strict
Accepted25 September1995
CopyrightC OIKOS 1996
ISSN 0030-1299
Printedin Ireland- all rightsreserved
OIKOS 76:1 (1996)
individuals from a given community are different species, also called the Gini coefficient, which can be used
as a measure of diversity (Pielou 1969). The inverse of
Simpson concentration, 1/?, is often employed to measure species diversity, and for a given number of species, S, in a community it has a maximum value equal
most popular measures of species diversity, and critically evaluate their relative merits with respect to the
above properties. Finally I discuss the relative merits of
these measures for assessing similarity among communities and for extrapolating total species diversity in a
another, using some measure of species diversity. Hutcheson (1970) described a t-test for the significance of
communities,and some of the most useful resultsare or after rejection of the null hypothesis of homogeneity
scatteredthroughthe genetic,statisticaland ecological among samples, it may then be appropriate to test the
literature.Here I collect and extendresultson the three hypothesis that one community is more diverse than
Species richness
This is simply the number of species in a community (or
Species richness
E[S]=S- -
(1 -pi)N
(3a)
Simpson concentration
extent.
The probabilitythat two randomlychosen individuals
The samplingvarianceof species richnessis exactly
froma givencommunityare the samespecies,calledthe (corrected from Stromgren et al. 1973)
S
"concentration"by Simpson(1949), is
Var[S] =
(1 -)N[1
-(1
p)N]
(2)
i= 1
16
+ 2Z
[(1-p-pj)N
(3b)
i>j
OIKOS 76:1 (1996)
4
Var[l - ] -
Z p-2
(5d)
estimator of concentration, S.
Fig. 1 compares the sampling properties of these
Shannon information
three diversity measures for communities of low or high
In a randomsample of N individualsfrom a commudiversity. It can be seen that the estimated species
nity, the diversitycalculatedusing the estimatedspe- richness can greatly underestimate the actual number of
cies frequenciespj, is denoted as /. For large N this
species even for very large samples in a highly diverse
has approximatemean and variance
community. The standard deviation of species richness
S(4a) also is rather large. Shannon information has a sub(4a) stantial bias for small samples, but the bias is small
E[H]-H2N
when 2N >>S. The standard deviation of Shannon diS
p (ln p )2- H2 /N
Var[H]
(4b) versity is much smaller than that for species richness.
1
_i=
Simpson diversity, 1 - k is not only unbiased, but also
(Pielou 1966, Hutcheson 1970, Bowman et al. 1971). has the smallest standard deviation.
Note that the bias in H dependson the actual number of species, S, which is generallyunknown.Hence
an unbiased estimator of Shannon information
does not exist. Accurate estimation of H requires Concavityof speciesdiversitymeasures
samplinglarge numbersof individuals,with 2N much A desirable property of a measure of species diversity is
greaterthan the actual numberof speciesin the com- that the total diversityin a set of communitiesshould
munity.
be greater than or equal to the (weighted) average
diversitywithin the communities(Lewontin1972). Let
Simpson diversity
ZE[(xik--pi)2]
i
p,(l -p,)
= 1- .
(5a)
E qj= 1. The weights associated with each community may reflect the relative abundance of the communities, the sizes of samples from the communities, or
equal weights. A diversity measure is strictly concave
when
(6)
Speciesrichnessobviouslyis strictlyconcave.
A continuousmeasureof diversitybased on species
frequencies is strictly concave if and only if its matrix of
Becausethis is a varianceit follows directlythat in a second derivatives is negative definite (Marcus and
random sample of N individualsfrom a community, Minc 1964).
estimates of the Simpson diversity, 1- X, calculated
The Shannon information measure of species diverusing the estimatedspecies frequenciesPj, have mean sity, H, is strictly concave (Aczel and Daroczy 1975:
exactly
E[l-]=(
1-
)(l1-X).
(5b)
(N (- 1)-).
N I)
(Sc)
35).
The Simpson concentration, X, is strictly convex.
Hence the diversity measure 1- k is strictly concave.
However, the more commonly used inverse Simpson
measure of diversity, 1/X, is in general not concave
(Patil and Taillie 1982). Thus in some cases using the
inverse Simpson measure, the total diversity in a set of
communities may be less than the average diversity
7
S=30
<Co
S= 300
30
L" It
20
200
I)
a)
ci)
0)
10
/,
I
/
100
C.)
cD
<z
1-
0
2
co
0)
ZZXZNNNNN?
_-----------_ _
III,
I!
II
1.5
.dI
1.5
1--
- -
I-
C3
-.
I
1.0
1.0
-
.n
E
- ---
..
-.-.....-..-..-..-..-..-..-.._
0.5
0.5
03)
ti
--
100
---
200
---
300
.--
400
---
500
1000 2000
3000
4000
5000
Sample size N
Example2
Speciesfrequenciesin community
1
2
pooled
0.8
p=
P2=
1.0
0.2
0.0
0.9
0.50
0.1
0.03
p7 =
=
1.4706
1/k=
1.0000
1.2195
(1 ,i + 1/X2)/2= 1.2353
= Damong + Dwithin
(7)
Species richness
In a pooled set of communities the total species richness
is ST and the species richness in community j is Sj. The
among-community component of total species richness
is
ST-
0.2022
0.0955
0.0703
0.09
0.05
0.04
p5=
P6 -
Dr
0.3529
0.26
p=3
p4 =
P8
Speciesfrequenciesin community
2
pooled
qj(ST-
Swithin-E
Sj).
(8)
-E Pi ln i -E qHj
i
= E qjH(,T).
(9a)
(9b)
(9c)
is the "discrimination information" between community j and the pooled set of communities, which is
non-negative (Kullback 1959, R6yni 1961, Aczel and
Daroczy 1975). MacArthur (1965) and MacArthur and
Wilson (1967) employed (9a) with equal weights to
measure the component of bird species diversity between two communities. Lewontin (1972) used (9a) to
partition genetic diversity in human populations, and
his method was elaborated for species diversity by
Allan (1975). In the special case when no species is
OIKOS 76:1 (1996)
0.0641
0.05205
0.0578
0.04390
0.02
0.01
0.0515
0.1057
3.019
4.981
(1/k, + 1/k2)/2= 4.000
0.03575
0.05785
3.895
qj ln qj.
d2= E (pZ
qJ
j
-_i)2
= qIX_
E
X
E/2.
i
(lOa)
Therefore
DT= 1-ZEp
= d2 + Dwithin.
=
H(,T) E Pi ln(pij/Pi)
0.42645
0.23110
0.09275
0.06015
(lOb)
(11)
1-Damong/DT
ST/Wwithin,
is not actually a
Discussion
diversity,but ratherthe inverseof communitysimilarity Species richnessis the most widely used measure of
in species composition.
diversity,because of its simplicityin data acquisition
Based on the Simpsonmeasureof genetic diversity and analysis.However,it has a well-knownstatistical
(heterozygosity) Nei (1973, 1987) developed an weaknessof a potentiallylarge samplingbias, in that
analogousmeasureof geneticsimilarityamongpopula- rare speciesoften will be absent even in large samples
tions (GsT)which has been widelyused to describethe or exhaustivesurveys.
genetic structureof populations.To measurecommuThe Shannoninformationmeasureof species divernity similaritybased on Simpsondiversitywe must use sity, though popular,has a rathertenuous foundation
1 - ~ to estimatediversitywithinsamplesin orderthat in ecological theory, as noted by Pielou (1966,1969),
the similaritymeasurenot exceedunity, which it could Hurlbert (1971), and May (1975). In samples from
when using the unbiasedestimator 1 - i for a finite speciosecommunities,the Shannondiversitymay have
numberof samples(as for the Morisitaindex of simi- a substantialbias (Hutcheson 1970, Bowman et al.
laritybetweentwo communitiesbased on the unbiased 1971).For both speciesrichnessand ShannoninformaSimpson concentration [Morisita 1959, Horn 1966, tion measures of diversity, the bias depends on the
Wolda 1981]).
actualnumberof speciesin a community,whichgenerStandardized measures of community similarity, ally is unknown, so that an unbiased estimator of
rangingfrom 0 to 1, generallyare biaseddownward,so speciesrichnessor Shannoninformationdoes not exist.
that the true similaritybetweencommunities,estimated
May (1975)preferreddiversitymeasuresbasedon the
This Simpsonindex to those based on information,because
from randomsamples,tendsto be underestimated.
can be seen most clearly in the expected similarity of the apparent relationshipof Simpson's index to
among randomsamplesfrom the same community.
variances.However,the commonlyused inverseSimpConsiderfirst the simplestsituationin which a very son diversity 1/X is not concave. When partitioning
large (effectivelyinfinite) number of samples of the humangeneticdiversity,Lewontin(1972) noted that a
same size, N, are taken from the same (infinitelylarge) diversitymeasure should have the propertythat the
community. Then the total diversity of the pooled total diversityin a pooled set of communitiesis greater
samplesis the same as that in the community,DT, and than or equal to the averagediversitywithincommunithe similarityamong communitiesis
ties. Violation of this propertyof concavitycan produce the uninterpretableresult of a negativediversity
(12)
16
D= E[D]/DT
among communities.
In contrast with the inverse Simpson diversity,the
in whichE[J5]is the meanvalue of any one of the three
Simpsondiversitymeasure1 - X,whichis the probabildiversitymeasuresin formulas(3a), (4a) and (Sb).
Fig. 2 plots theseexpectedsimilaritiesamongmultiple ity that two randomlychosen individualsare different
samplesfrom the samecommunity.The amountof bias species, has a number of advantages. 1 - k is precisely
in the similaritymeasuresparallelsthat for the corre- the varianceof speciesidentitywithina community,for
sponding diversitymeasures.The similarityin species which an unbiasedestimatorexists. Using this measure
richness among replicate samples has a large bias, the total diversity in a set of communitiescan be
10
OIKOS76:1(1996)
Fig. 2. Expectedsimilarity
among n samplesof N individualsfrom the same community,based on partition
of threemeasuresof the total speciesdiversityin the
samples.The numberand
abundancedistributionof
speciesin the community
are as in Fig. 1. Solid lines
give the exact proportionof
the total speciesdiversityin
the communityexpected
withinsamples.Dashed lines
are approximations,based
on the ratio of the expected
diversitywithinsamplesto
the expectedtotal diversity
S=30
S = 300
0.8
in n = 2 or 10 samples.
- ?oo
0.6
WA
H
0.4
0.2
II
v
1-~
n = oo
n = oo
0.8
0.6
1 -x
0.4
0.2
u
100
200
300
400
500
Samplesize N
partitioned into the average diversity within the communities plus the diversity among communities, with
the latter equal to the variance in species frequencies
among communities. This measure of species diversity
thus facilitates statistical partitioning of species diversity within and among communities using analysis of
variance.
Partition of total species diversity in a set of communities into additive components within and among communities provides a unifying framework with which to
measure diversity at different levels of organization
using the same general formula, so that a-, P-, and
y-diversity are measured in the same way. Additive
partition of diversity also suggests a natural measure of
similarity among multiple communities, the proportion
of the total diversity found within communities.
Coefficients of community similarity inherit the
statistical sampling properties of the diversity measures
OIKOS 76:1 (1996)
References
Aczel, J. and Daroczy,Z. 1975.On measuresof information
- AcademicPress,New York.
and theircharacterizations.
Allan, J. D. 1975.Componentsof diversity.- Oecologia 18:
359-367.
Nei, M. 1973.Analysisof gene diversityin subdividedpopulations. - Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 70: 3321-3323.
- 1987.Molecularevolutionarygenetics.- ColumbiaUniv.
Press,New York.
Noss, R. F. and Cooperrider,A. Y. 1994. Saving nature's
legacy, protecting and restoring biodiversity. - Island
Press,Washington.
OIKOS 76:1 (1996)
13