Measuring Species
diversity
Biological Diversity
• Biodiversity can be quantified in
many different ways.
• Two main factors taken into account
by ecologists are:
1. Species richness
2. Species evenness
Species Richness
• Is a measure of the number of different
kinds of organisms present in a particular
area.
• Species density or the number of species per
m2 is most commonly used to measure species
richness.
• This is a simple count of the species in
a community.
• Each species contributes one count to
the total.
Flower Species Counts from Two
Communities
Numbers of individuals
Flower Species Community 1 Community 2
Daisy 300 20
Dandelion 335 49
Buttercup 365 931
Total 1000 1000
Species Richness for Two Flower
Communities
Community Species Richness
1 3
2 3
Species Evenness
• Evenness is a measure of the relative
abundance of the different species
making up the richness of an area.
• Evenness can be calculated as:
Relative abundance = number of individuals of a species
total number of individuals
Flower Species Counts from Two Communities
Numbers of individuals
Flower Species Community 1 Community 2
Daisy 300 20
Dandelion 335 49
Buttercup 365 931
Total 1000 1000
Species Evenness of Two Communities
Numbers of individuals
Flower Species Community 1 Community 2
Daisy 0.30 0.02
Dandelion 0.34 0.05
Buttercup 0.36 0.93
Total 1 1
Biodiversity
• A community dominated by one or two
species is considered to be less diverse
than one in which several different
species have similar abundance.
• As species richness and evenness
increase, so does diversity.
Simpson’s Index
• Simpson’s Index is a calculation done by
ecologists that is a measure of diversity which
takes into account both richness and
evenness of species.
n = the total number of organisms of a particular
species
N = the total number of organisms of all species
Simpson’s Index of Diversity
• The value of D ranges between 0 and 1.
• With this index, 0 represents infinite
diversity and 1 represents no diversity.
– The greater the value of D, the lower the
diversity.
– The less the value of D, the higher the
diversity.
Using Simpson’s index to measure biodiversity – a worked example
It may be easier to understand the use of Simpson’s index with the following example.
Consider three communities, each made up of a total of 100 organisms, drawn from
combinations of ten species, A to J.
Community 1 has the highest diversity. It has the joint highest species richness (10) and each
species has a similar relative abundance. Community 2 has the same species richness as
community 1, but is dominated by one species (A) so that the diversity of this community is
lower than in community 1. Community 3 has a lower diversity than community 1, due to its
lower species richness.
Table 1 Species composition of three different communities.
Species Community 1 Community 2 Community 3
A 10 72 35
B 9 6 34
C 11 3 31
D 10 3 0
E 8 1 0
F 12 3 0
G 10 4 0
H 11 3 0
I 10 2 0
J 9 3 0
Total 100 100 100
The formula for calculating Simpson’s index is:
D
nini 1
NN1
Where N = the total number of all organisms
ni = the numbers of individuals of each individual species
The lower the value of D, the greater is the species diversity. Take for example community 1
in the table 1 above. The values of (n-1) and ni(n-1) in the computation of D are shown in
table 2 opposite.
Simpson’s Index Scale: Level of
Diversity
1 no diversity
0.9 extremely low diversity
0.8 very low diversity
0.7 low diversity
0.6 moderate-low diversity
0.5 moderate diversity
0.4 moderate-high diversity
0.3 high diversity
0.2 very high diversity
0.1 extremely high diversity
0 infinite diversity
Shannon-Weiner Index
• Another commonly used index is the
Shannon-Weiner Diversity Index (H).
• Mostly used in freshwater ecology
Shannon Index:
The index independently derived by Shannon and Wiener from
the application of information theory is known as the Sharmon
index of diversity. It is sometimes incorrectly referred to as the
Shannon – weaver index (Krebs, 1985).
The index assumes that:
(a) All species are represented in the sample, and
(b) Individuals are randomly sampled from an ‘indefinitely large’
population (Pielou, 1975).
It is calculated from the equation:
H’ =- Σ pi In pi
Where pi is the proportion of individuals found in the ith species.
It is estimated as (ni/N). N is total number of individuals in S
species. The value of Shannon index usually varies between 1.5
and 3.5 and rarely exceeds 4.5. The value of H’ is related to
species richness but is also influenced by the underlying species
abundance distribution.
