Statistics and Partitioning of Species Diversity, and Similarity among Multiple Communities
Abstract
Species richness, Shannon information, and Simpson diversity are the three most commonly used nonparametric measures of species diversity. The sampling bias and variance of these measures differ greatly. Species richness may be seriously underestimated for even very large samples from a speciose community. The bias in species richness and Shannon information depend on unknown parameters of the species abundance distribution. An unbiased estimator exists only for Simpson diversity. Each of these measures is concave, so that the total diversity in a pooled set of communities exceeds (or equals) the average diversity within communities. The total diversity in a set of communities can therefore be partitioned into positive, additive components within and among communities, corresponding to α- and β-diversity. Partitioning Simpson diversity corresponds to an analysis of variance. The proportion of the total diversity found within communities provides a natural measure of similarity among multiple communities. The expected similarity among multiple random samples from the same community depends on the number of samples and on the underlying measure of diversity.
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Using different q values in the construction of Δ measures for comparing genetic diversities of two or more populations has the same effect: small q values impact differences in rare variants and large q values emphasize differences in common variants.
“The use of different q values in the construction of Δ measures for the comparison of the genetic diversities of two (or more) populations will have the same effect50, 130, 131: small q values will impact differences in rare variants and large q values emphasize differences in common variants132.”
From Statistical analysis strategies for association studies involving rare variants (2010) · cites this paper as [131]
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- Authors
- Lande, R.
- Corresponding author
- Lande, Russell
- Venue
- Oikos
- Publisher
- JSTOR
- Published
- 1996-05
- Volume
- 76
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 5
- ISSN
- 0030-1299 (ISSN-L)
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- W2318871708
- Cited by
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- FWCI
- 9.26
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- Language
- en
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- Oikos (publishedVersion)
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- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Nature and Landscape Conservation › Ecology and Vegetation Dynamics Studies
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Ecology › Microbial Community Ecology and Physiology
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Ecology › Freshwater macroinvertebrate diversity and ecology
- Keywords
- species diversity, species richness, Shannon information, Simpson diversity, diversity partitioning, alpha diversity, beta diversity, community similarity, sampling bias, species abundance distribution
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