Measuring Biological Diversity

Helps the reader quantify and interpret patterns of ecological diversity, focusing on the measurement and estimation of species richness and abundance. This book explores the concept of ecological diversity, bringing fresh perspectives to a field beset by contradictory views and advice. This accessible and timely book provides a comprehensive overview of how to measure biodiversity. The diversity of life on earth inspires fundamental ecological questions concerning the abundance of species and their distribution over space and time. The rapid loss of this diversity, primarily due to the impact of humanity, makes the need for effective ways of measuring biological diversity more important than ever. As the successor to the author’s influential Ecological Diversity and its Measurement, this book has been completely rewritten to reflect the explosion of interest in biodiversity in the last fifteen years. The book highlights new developments, including innovative approaches to measuring taxonomic distinctness and estimating species richness, and evaluates these alongside traditional methods such as species abundance distributions, and diversity and evenness statistics. Measuring Biological Diversity assumes no specialist mathematical knowledge and includes worked examples and links to web-based software. It will be essential reading for all students, researchers, and managers who need to measure biological diversity. This accessible and timely book provides a comprehensive overview of how to measure biodiversity. The book highlights new developments, including innovative approaches to measuring taxonomic distinctness and estimating species richness, and evaluates these alongside traditional methods such as species abundance distributions, and diversity and evenness statistics. Helps the reader quantify and interpret patterns of ecological diversity, focusing on the measurement and estimation of species richness and abundance. Explores the concept of ecological diversity, bringing new perspectives to a field beset by contradictory views and advice. Discussion spans issues such as the meaning of community in the context of ecological diversity, scales of diversity and distribution of diversity among taxa Highlights advances in measurement paying particular attention to new techniques such as species richness estimation, application of measures of diversity to conservation and environmental management and addressing sampling issues Includes worked examples of key methods in helping people to understand the techniques and use available computer packages more effectively

This accessible and timely book provides a comprehensive overview of how to measure biodiversity. The book highlights new developments, including innovative approaches to measuring taxonomic distinctness and estimating species richness, and evaluates these alongside traditional methods such as species abundance distributions, and diversity and evenness statistics. Helps the reader quantify and interpret patterns of ecological diversity, focusing on the measurement and estimation of species richness and abundance. Explores the concept of ecological diversity, bringing new perspectives to a field beset by contradictory views and advice. Discussion spans issues such as the meaning of community in the context of ecological diversity, scales of diversity and distribution of diversity among taxa Highlights advances in measurement paying particular attention to new techniques such as species richness estimation, application of measures of diversity to conservation and environmental management and addressing sampling issues Includes worked examples of key methods in helping people to understand the techniques and use available computer packages more effectively