Choosing and using diversity indices: insights for ecological applications from the German Biodiversity Exploratories. Issue 18 (28th August 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Morris, E. Kathryn; Caruso, Tancredi; Buscot, François; Fischer, Markus; Hancock, Christine; Maier, Tanja S.; Meiners, Torsten; Müller, Caroline; Obermaier, Elisabeth; Prati, Daniel; Socher, Stephanie A.; Sonnemann, Ilja; Wäschke, Nicole; Wubet, Tesfaye; Wurst, Susanne; Rillig, Matthias C.
• Is Part Of: Ecology and evolution. Volume 4:Issue 18(2014)
• Page Start: 3514
• Page End: 3524
• Publication Date: 2014-08-28
• Subjects: Ecology -- Periodicals; Evolution -- Periodicals; 577.05
• DOI: 10.1002/ece3.1155
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2045-7758

Abstract

<abstract abstract-type="graphical" xml:lang="en" id="ece31155-abs-0002"> <title> <x xml:space="preserve">Abstract</x> </title> <p>Biodiversity is a difficult concept to quantify, partly because of its multidimensional nature, and many simple to complex indices have been developed for this purpose. We collected data on diversity of herbaceous plants, arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, aboveground arthropods, belowground insect larvae, and Plantago lanceolata molecular and chemical diversity in 60 temperate grasslands and calculated a variety of simple to complex diversity indices for each (S, H', D1, D2, E, BP). While these common diversity indices appeared interchangeable in simple analyses quantifying changes in diversity, when quantifying interactions between diversities the conclusions varied with the index chosen. <boxed-text content-type="graphic" id="ece31155-blkfxd-0001" position="anchor" orientation="portrait"><graphic position="anchor" mimetype="image" xlink:href="ark:/27927/pgh1f90tn0q" orientation="portrait" xlink:type="simple" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" /></boxed-text></p> </abstract>