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Bot 324 assignment

The document discusses various indices used to measure species diversity in ecological communities, including diversity, similarity, dominance, and association indices. These indices provide insights into community composition, species rarity, and commonness, as well as the relationships between different species. Understanding these metrics is crucial for biologists studying community structure and ecological interactions.

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4 views

Bot 324 assignment

The document discusses various indices used to measure species diversity in ecological communities, including diversity, similarity, dominance, and association indices. These indices provide insights into community composition, species rarity, and commonness, as well as the relationships between different species. Understanding these metrics is crucial for biologists studying community structure and ecological interactions.

Uploaded by

rhozynashsomi
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Diversity is a mathematicak measure of species diversity in a community.

Diversity indices
provide more information about community composition than simply species richness (i.e the
number of species present.) They also take into account the relative abundance of species into
account. Diversity indices provide more information about ;

-rarity

-commonness of a soecies in a
community.

The ability to quantify diversity in this way is an important tool for biologists trying to
understand the community structure.

A,diversity index is also (also called simpsons diversity index) is a quantative measure that
reflects how many different types(such a species) are there in a dataset (community) and that
can simultaneously take into account the phylogenetic relations among the individual groups of
species,mostly in divergence,richness or evenness.

Similarity index.

Similarity index is expressed as the percentage of reference community found in an ecological


site. In some cases, it can be constructed in successional stages. Similarity index is used to
determine how closely the current plant community resembles the potential plant community
or some other reference community.

To calculate similarity index,the weight ( pounds per acre) of each species group is recorded for
a site. The allowable production of a species or species group cannot exceed that of the
reference community. The similarity index is then determined by dividing the allowable
production accross all the species by tha total production of the reference community.

Dominance index.

Dominance indices are weighted towards the abundance of the commonest species. The most
widely used dominance index is the simpson's diversity index. It takes into account both
richness and evenness.

Simpsons index measures the probability any two individuals drawn at random from an
infinitely large community belong to the same species.

Where n= the total number of individual froneach species group N= the number of organisms of
all species.
The value of D rabges from 1 to 0. With this index,0 means infinite index while 1 means no
diversity. That is,the bigger the value of D the lower the diversity. This doesnt sound logical so
the value of D is always substracted from 1 or its recipricol considered.

Association index.

An association can be termed as real,intergrated entity shaped by either species interactions or


the habitat requirements or it can be viewed as merely a common point along a continum. It
can also be seen as grouping of plant species as a coincidence produced by fluctuactions and
fortuitous immigration. The relationship between one species and another in a community has
evolved through interactions,based on the mode of nutrition,requirement,shelter and the
habitat of the species.

Interspecific association.

The relationship between members of different population.

It is the representation of interactions between the species-species and species-environment.

Interspecific association is the basis of succession and assembly of biological organisations.

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