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There are many ways to measure biodiversity within a given ecosystem. However, the two most popular are Shannon-Weaver diversity index, [4] commonly referred to as Shannon diversity index, and the other is Simpsons diversity index. [5] Although many scientists prefer to use Shannon's diversity index simply because it takes into account species ...
The observed species richness is affected not only by the number of individuals but also by the heterogeneity of the sample. If individuals are drawn from different environmental conditions (or different habitats), the species richness of the resulting set can be expected to be higher than if all individuals are drawn from similar environments.
SAD is a measurement of how common, or rare species are within an ecosystem. [5] This allows researchers to assess how different species are distributed throughout an ecosystem. SAD is one of the most basic measurements in ecology and is used very often, therefore many different methods of measurement and analysis have developed.
Species abundance patterns can be best visualized in the form of relative abundance distribution plots. The consistency of relative species abundance patterns suggests that some common macroecological "rule" or process determines the distribution of individuals among species within a trophic level.
The technique of rarefaction was developed in 1968 by Howard Sanders in a biodiversity assay of marine benthic ecosystems, as he sought a model for diversity that would allow him to compare species richness data among sets with different sample sizes; he developed rarefaction curves as a method to compare the shape of a curve rather than absolute numbers of species.
The problem with this is that the species area curve does not usually approach an asymptote, so it is not obvious what should be taken as the total. [ 12 ] the number of species always increases with area up to the point where the area of the entire world has been accumulated.
In ecology, alpha diversity (α-diversity) is the mean species diversity in a site at a local scale. The term was introduced by R. H. Whittaker [1] [2] together with the terms beta diversity (β-diversity) and gamma diversity (γ-diversity).
Consequently, some macroecological and community patterns cannot be fully expressed by alpha and beta diversity. Due to these two reasons, a new way of measuring species turnover, coined Zeta diversity (ζ-diversity), [ 12 ] has been proposed and used to connect all existing incidence-based biodiversity patterns.