I think Shannon - Wiener Index will better reflect general species diversity in a forest community.
I too think Shannon index, but the index has to be converted to the effective number of species. I greatly recommend to use the smart program SPADE by Anne Chao (Taiwan University) that is downloadable from:
http://chao.stat.nthu.edu.tw/
Many indices for communities studies with pertinent explanations!
Usually when you have high dominance, it is better to use simpson.
Shannon-Wiener has many criticisms: 5 species with 2 individuals each species gives you the same result of 5 species with 1000 individuals each species. Better is the Brillouin index
Saludos
C.
Shannon index is species richness index and Simpson index is a proportional abundance index. So for dominance or abundance of a community given by Simpson index. Better to use Shannon index for diversity. Even simple index like Margalef's index would also give same diversity measure as Shannon index. In a my study I used all indices and I found no significant difference between indices for species richness.
sena
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