MEASURING BIODIVERSITY

Species Richness, Evenness, Simpson's Index,

Shannon-Wiener Index

Psyche Karren Ann O. Jondonero

Natural Sciences Department, CAS
Content:
• Why measure biodiversity?
• Factors influencing species richness
• Three scales of diversity
• Diversity Indices
 Why is biodiversity measured?

▪ high diversity is perceived a synonymous with ecosystem

Then

health
▪ increased stability, increased productivity, and resistance to
invasion and other disturbances
Now

▪ measure and track changes

MacArthur, R. 1995. Fluctuations of animal populations and a measure of community stability. Ecology 35, 533-536.
Diverse habitats with a variety of plants can
have benefits such as:

▪ Providing forage for a variety of insect and

vertebrate species.
- Stability resulting from plants in the community that are able
to survive drought, insect plagues, and/or disease outbreaks so
that the site will have some soil protection/forage/etc. in those
years.
▪ Plants containing a variety of genetic material that
may be useful in long-term survival and stability of
the community.
Diverse habitats with a variety of plants can
have benefits such as:

▪ The community benefits from a mixture of plants:

- soils improve with nitrogen fixers, deep rooted plants
bring nutrients up from soil layers below other plants
roots.
- some species work together so that both can survive
(called commensalism) and therefore, diverse
communities can be more stable.
▪ Healthy diverse plant communities generally have
all niches filled and are theoretically less likely to be
invaded by noxious or opportunistic introduced
species.
 Species Richness - number of species that occur within the community

Why do some communities contain more species than others?

- Resource productivity
- Climatic variation
- Gradients (Latitude, Altitude, Depth, Succession)
Resource productivity
• More productive environments have more species
with narrower niches but higher densities
• Evidence also suggests that highest diversity occurs
at intermediate levels of productivity in some
communities because competitive exclusion is less
likely and immigration rates are higher.
 Climatic variation

- Unpredictable climatic variation is a form of disturbance and

species richness may be highest at intermediate levels.
- But some work shows that species richness increases as climatic
variation decreases.
Latitude

- Increase in species diversity with a decrease in latitude towards the tropics

Altitude

- Decrease in species richness with increased altitude

 Depth

- Generally species richness in lakes decreases with water depth.

- But for benthic invertebrates richness is highest on the continental shelf at

about 2000m
Succession - the process of change in species structure over time

- Species richness increases with time through successional series because

of a shift in dominance from smaller numbers of dominant species to
more species of equivalent dominance.

* Then usually a decline in richness at successional maturity

Three Scales of Diversity
Three Scales of Diversity
Species evenness

- abundance of organisms within each type of species

- the degree of equitability in the distribution of individuals

among a group of species.
• 1,700 different species
of beetles in a SINGLE
tree
– Species Richness?
– Species Evenness?
Species Plot 1 Woods Plot 2 field
Centipedes 50 10
Millipedes 36 50
Butterflies 35 0

Lady bugs 55 39
 Based on the data:
• Which plot has more species richness?

• Which plot has more species evenness?

• Which plot has more biodiversity?

 What if your data looked like this?
Species Plot 1 Woods Plot 2 Field
Centipedes 50 1

Which one Millipedes 36 1

Maybe Maybe
has more more more
Butterflies 35 30
biodiversity evenness richness?
now? Lady bugs 55 ? 39
Grasshoppers 0 40
Diversity Indices
To get a better description of the community we need
to get measure of species richness and evenness of
their distribution.

Two major forms:

1. Dominance indices (Simpson index)
2. Information indices (Shannon-Weiner index)
 Edward Hugh Simpson’s Idea
•Scientists needed a universally recognized method of comparison.

•In 1949, a British statistician came up with an idea he published in

the journal Nature:
In order to understand how diverse an area is we can do a
math problem that shows us in terms of a probability how
diverse the area is!

Plot 1! Plot 2!
Let’s Review Probability:
Probability is a way of expressing likelihood that an event will occur
For example: If I toss a coin what is the probability of the coin landing
on heads?

• Heads • Tails

One side of the quarter is heads and the other side of the quarter is tails,
so we can say you have a half or ½ or 0.5 or 50% chance of the quarter
landing on the heads side. Another way you can say this is you are
about 50% sure the quarter will land on the side with the head.
Simpson’s Index
- Simpson’s Index is a way to express how diverse a sample is based
on a probability.

The probability can be explained as follows:

1. If you close your eyes and pick out an individual organism from a
sample and then you repeat by closing your eyes and picking out
another individual from your sample, what is the probability that the
organisms will be different species?

2. If the probability is high, for example 0.8 then you have an 80% chance
of picking out different species so you have high diversity in your
sample.
Simpson’s Index
- a measurement that accounts for the
richness and the percent of each species
from a biodiversity sample within a local
community

-the index assumes that the proportion of

individuals in an area indicate their
importance to diversity
 1st Draw

Same or Different? 2nd Draw

Simpson’s Index

Let’s define the variables:

D= Simpsons Index of Diversity
Σ = summation
S= number of species
ni= number of individuals within the ith species
N= total number of individuals within the
sample
• Let’s say you wanted to sum up a sequence of numbers:

species1 + species2 + species3 + …+ ni +…+ nS

• What mathematical notation would you use to make it easier

to write that? Summation Notation

• Read it: “the sum of ni, from i = 1 to S, where S is the total

number of species”
D= Simpsons Index of Diversity
Σ = summation
S= number of species
ni= number of individuals within the ith species
N= total number of individuals within the sample

Let’s calculate D for plot 1:

First do the numerator (top part): =(50(50-1)+36(36-1)+35(35-1)+55(55-1))

*Use each observation to get count n, then =50(49)+36(35)+35(34)+55(54)

multiply it by (n-1) and add those products
together. =2450+1260+1190+2970

=7870
Next, let’s calculate the denominator:
Remember N = total number of individuals
counting all species in your plot.
In plot 1:
50+36+35+55=176=N
For the denominator we have to calculate:
N(N-1) = 176(175)=30,800

Next let’s put it all together:

So what does this mean? If you randomly pick two
individuals in plot 1 you have a 74.4% chance of
those two individuals being different species. We can
D = 1 - (0.256) say the diversity in the plot is high.
D = 0.744
 ON YOUR OWN:
Calculate Simpson’s Index for Plot 2

Remember:
Start with the numerator
Then calculate the denominator
Then divide the numerator by denominator
Then subtract your fraction from 1

Which plot is more diverse based on your calculations?

Does this support or refute your hypothesis?
 What if your data looked like this?
Species Plot 1 Woods Plot 2 Field
Centipedes 50 1

Which one Millipedes 36 1

Maybe Maybe
has more more more
Butterflies 35 30
biodiversity evenness richness?
now? Lady bugs 55 ? 39
Grasshoppers 0 40
Shannon-Wiener Index (H’)
Assumptions
– All individuals are randomly sampled
– Population is indefinitely large, or effectively infinite
– All species in the community are represented
Shannon-Wiener Index (H’)

Where:

H’ = Shannon-Wiener index of species diversity

s = number of species in community
pi = proportion of total abundance represented by ith species
(Divide no. of individuals of species i by total number of samples)
Species (i) No. in pi ln(pi) (pi) × ln(pi)
sample
1. Asthma plant 60 0.60 -0.51 -0.31
(Tawa-tawa)
2. Physic nut 10 0.10 -2.30 -0.23
(Tuba-tuba)
3. Silver bush 25 0.25 -1.39 -0.35
(Sinaw-sinaw)
4. Indian
Mulberry
1 0.01 -4.61 -0.05
(Nino)
5. Blue snake
weed 4 0.04 -3.22 -0.13
(Elepante)
S=5 Sum = 100 Sum = -1.07
Quiz 1:
Species Observed Field A Field B
Cocksfoot grass 57 38
Timothy grass 32 16
Buttercup 3 14
Clover 3 22
Thistle 1 5
Dandelion 4 5
Total 100 100
Pielou evenness
E = H’ / Hmax
E = Pielou evenness
H’ = calculated Shannon-Wiener diversity
Hmax = ln(s) [species diversity under maximum
equitability conditions]
Quiz 2:
Community 1

Species N pi ln(pi) pi[(ln(pi)]

A 62

B 97

C 110

D 84

E 16
Community 2

Species N pi ln(pi) pi[(ln(pi)]

A 88

B 10

C 0

D 211

E 27
 Community 1 Community 2
s
H’
Hmax
E