Diversity indices are not exactly the way to explain the ecological diversity as all the faunal and floral communities do not have similar scale (per unit area) for their occurrence so a combined assessment of communities (containing species) may not be exactly explained for their ecological aspects? should ecologist separate the species according to their sizes and how does it make difficulty in understanding the pure ecological aspects?
Still one of the best papers on the topic. Although, I think it gets at the heart of what you are asking. Indices are only one aspect of diversity and the various indices are related... not mutually exclusive, but rather inclusive and complementary.
The results of a population density is significantly different comparing other sampling zone/area. In real, the understanding of density for a certain community needs many things into account to make a clear statement for it using statistics. This is easy to understand e.g. a community or species in a community is resident or not? Can it migrate with the change in physico-chemical/ environmental factors/gradients or life activities related to its different stages e.g. migratory fish between sea and river egg laying? or shifting of some of beach dwelling macrofauna towards the water during different seasons (subject to the tidal amplitude) may alter the meaning of the density which was considered as significantly different while talking about the overall community of any area (or per unit area).
Hence the real density of any system is not reflecting the same using samples of a particular area as the migrants are absents and may alter the results up to extreme levels. Hence the results using statistical analysis and modelling has not given us the appropriate results of understanding ecology but the statistics and modelling software only. What would you say?
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