Calculating Diversity

Class 3 Presentation 2

Outline
Lecture Class room exercise to calculate diversity indices

Why quantify biodiversity?

Initially thought that more diversity = more stable ecosystem* Now used to measure and track changes

*MacArthur, R. 1955. Fluctuations of animal populations and a measure of community stability. Ecology 35:533-536

How do we measure biodiversity?

Use functional categories
Ecosystem, species, genetic

Use theoretical categories*

Alpha Beta Gamma * Whittaker, R.H. 1960. Vegetation of the Siskiyou Mountains, Oregon and California. Ecol. Mono. 30:279-338.

Alpha diversity
Diversity within a particular sample E.g. the number of species surveyed

Beta Diversity
Changes in sample composition along an environmental gradient E.g. composition of forest stands on the slope of a mountain

Gamma Diversity
Diversity due to differences in samples when all samples combined E.g. diversity of a forest landscape

Describing Communities
Two methods Describe physical attributes (e.g. age class, size class)
Describe number of species and their abundance

Biodiversity
Diversity of living things Term often misused and overused Current focus in conservation studies Includes interest in genetic, species and ecosystem diversity We will use species as our focus but concepts can be used for genetic and ecosystem diversity as well.

Species Richness
Number of species in a community The simplest measure Can count all spp only is few simple ecosystems Does not consider number of individuals Difficulties
When is it a specie?
Aphids Clonal plants

Cannot count all species with limited time

Species Richness
How? Identify organism groups of interest Identify boundaries of community Survey area for organisms of interest

Species diversity
Species richness not very informative Each community has 5 spp & 50 individuals Spp 1
Comm A Comm B 10 46

Spp 2
10 1

Spp 3
10 1

Spp 4
10 1

Spp 5
10 1

Diversity indices
To get a better description of the community we need to get a measure of spp richness and evenness of their distribution We usually use an index to represent several different measures
E.g. stock markets, air pollution, etc.

Diversity indices
Over 60 indices used in ecology Indices used to measure proportional abundance Two major forms:
Dominance indices (e.g. Simpson index) Information indices (e.g. Shannon Weiner index)

Simpson Diversity Index (D)

Simpsons index considered a dominance index because it weights towards the abundance of the most common species. measures the probability two individuals randomly selected from a sample will belong to the same category For example, the probability of two trees, picked at random from a tropical rainforest being of the same species would be relatively low , whereas in the boreal forest would be relatively high.

Simpson Diversity Index (D)

Ds = (n1(n1 -1)/N(N-1)) Where: Ds = Bias corrected form for Simpson Index n1 = number of individuals of spp 1 N = Total number of spp in community
In this form as diversity increases index value gets smaller

Simpson Diversity Index (D)

To make it easier to read the index is often read as: Reciprocal i.e. 1/ Ds Complimentary form: 1- Ds Here as diversity increases Index value increases

Simpson Diversity Index (D)

Sugar Red Yellow Maple Maple Birch
# Trees 56 48 12

Red Oak
6

White Ash
3

Total
125

See Excel

((56*55)/(125*124))+ Show how ((48*47)/(125*124)) + . index .((3*2)/125*124)) = 0.35509 changes

Simpson Diversity Index (D)

Complimentary form = 1-D = 1-0.35509 = 0.6449 Reciprocal 1/D 1/0.35509 = 2.816

Shannon-Weiner Index (H')

The index measures the uncertainty of a category in a particular set It is a measure of evenness For example, very low uncertainty the letter y is the next letter in this string: yyyyyyy (H' = 0)

Shannon-Weiner Index (H')

Assumptions:
All species represented Sample randomized (equal probability of being selected in the sample)

H' = - pilnpi
pi= proportion of the ith species ln=natural logarithm

Shannon-Weiner Index (H')

Sugar Red Yellow Maple Maple Birch Red Oak White Ash Total

# Trees
p

56

48

12

3
3/125

125

56/125 48/125 12/125 6/125 0.44 0.38 0.096 0.048

0.024

-plnp 0.359 0.367 0.224 0.146 0.089 1.187

Shannon-Weiner Index (H')

Index affected by both number of species and evenness of their population Diversity increases as both increase Diversity maximum when all species equally abundant

Evenness
Can use Shannon Weiner index to get a measure of evenness First calculate Hmax Evenness = H/ Hmax Evenness will vary between 1 and 0

Evenness
In the last example H= 1.1875 Hmax = 1.609 Therefore E = 1.1875/1.609 = 0.738 The closer to 1 the more even the populations that form the community

Questions?