There seems to be some confusion in the literature and both are commonly used for the same index. However, there must be one reference for the right citation of the index.
Any ideas?
Hello,
Please check this article.
DOI 10.1007/s11270-016-2960-6
Hope this helps. Thank you.
Thanks Hamit, I have just found this paper too and it seems to cover perfectly the question. However, a more recent publication by Selene Ortiz-Burgos (2015) is named after "Shannon-Weaver Diversity Index". It might be the similar misleading citation, again.
In fact, the Spellerberg and Fedor (2003) paper concludes as:
" We suggest that the ‘mislabelling’ of the Shannon Index ‘H’ (as referred to by Krebs, 1999) has come about partly because of the joint authorship of Shannon & Weaver’s book, which has led to a belief that these two authors can be attributed to the Index. That is, the Shannon index is sometimes called the Shannon & Weaver Index. In fact, in the late 1940s Shannon had built on the work of Wiener. That being the case, it seems preferable to refer to ‘H’ (the species diversity index) as the ‘Shannon Index’ or the ‘Shannon & Wiener Index’ "
Please check these useful PDF attachments for the answer to your query.
It seems that "Shannon-Weaver diversity index" is commonly used in recent publications...
https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/biolog.2017.72.issue-7/biolog-2017-0088/biolog-2017-0088.xml
https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?doi=10%2E21411%2FCBM%2EA%2ECC457186&issn=0007-9723&issue=1&journal=CAHIERS%20DE%20BIOLOGIE%20MARINE&hl=en&pages=49-57&title=Diversity%20of%20crustacean%20species%20from%20Tunis%20Southern%20Lagoon%20%28Central%20Mediterranean%29%20after%20an%20ecological%20restoration&author=K%20Ounifi-Ben%20Amor&publication_year=2017&volume=58
@Anna-Maria,
Re: Spelerberg and Fedor (2003): Yes, seems just "Shannon Index" to be the correct form. Wikipedia uses the term "Shannon Index"
"The Shannon index has been a popular diversity index in the ecological literature, where it is also known as Shannon's diversity index, the Shannon–Wiener index,[citation needed] the Shannon–Weaver index and the Shannon entropy. The measure was originally proposed by Claude Shannon to quantify the entropy (uncertainty or information content) in strings of text" (Shannon, C. E. (1948) A mathematical theory of communication. The Bell System Technical Journal, 27, 379–423 and 623–656.).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversity_index#Shannon_index
As Anne Magurran writes in her book ( Magurran, A. E. (2013). Ecological diversity and its measurement. Springer Science & Business Media),
adding Wiener or Wiever to Shannon's name is just a widely spread but incorrect form.
Faced the same problem a few years ago. It is indeed the "Shannon index". (and the correct reference is: Shannon, C.E. (1948) A mathematical theory of communication. The Bell System Technical Journal, 27, 379–423.)
Check "The Mathematical Theory of Communication."
It is Shannon and Weaver.
"Shannon-Wiener diversity index" is the correct name and is the one widely used.
There is a recent review on the topic in Oikos, the correct labelling according to this article is Shannon-Wiener : Article Avoiding erroneous citations in ecological research: read be...
Everyone: The correct name is the Shannon-Wiener Diversity Index. Not Weaver!!
Whether Shannon or Shannon Wiener or Shannon Weaver seems to depend on your field of research .. Shannon seems to be a good compromise since that is the only name on the original publication ... ?!
I think the correct version is "Shannon-Wiener Index". Shannon originally described it in a publication from 1948. The full text can be found here: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=6773024
The same paper was published (unchanged it seems) as a book chapter with several footnotes added, which acknowledged that Shannon was heavily influenced by earlier works of Wiener (pdf of the book can be found here: http://www.magmamater.cl/MatheComm.pdf). To add to the confusion, this book was published with a co-author named Weaver. This is why the name "Shannon-Weaver Index" is often used. But, in my opinion this is incorrect because Weaver did not contribute much to the development of the index. In fact Weaver's chapter in the book is more of a historical overview, which also acknowledges Wiener's contribution.
I ran into the same issue in the late 1980's. After reading Shannon 1948 and Shannon and Weaver 1949 came to the conclusion the correct citation is Shannon and Wiener. I agree with Susanne a good compromise is Shannon.
In ecology, species richness refers to number of species and species eveness refers to homogeneity of the species.
The Shannon diversity index (H) is another index that is commonly used to characterize species diversity in a community. It is estimated as species density i.e. number of species per plot and as Shannon-Wiener index (1963)[1]. Simpson and Berger-Parker indices were calculated to study the pattern of species packing (dominance or evenness) and indicate the relative importance of the one species contributing the most to the total abundance.
Indices of diversity
(i) Shannon-Wiener Index
The Shannon-Wiener diversity index for each sample is calculated. Where pi = the proportion of individuals in the species. Species Diversity & Richness calculates the index using the natural logarithm.
In terms of species abundance: Where ni= the number of species with I individuals. The information measure is nits for base e and bits per individual for base two logarithms. The value of the Shannon-Wiener Index usually lays between 1.5 and 3.5 for ecological data and rarely exceeds 4.0.(May 1975)[2].
ii) Shannon maximum
This is simply the maximum value the Shannon-Wiener index could produce for the given data set and is given by ln(S), where S is the total number of species. H‟ =Hmax=lnS The ratio of observed diversity to maximum diversity can therefore be used to measure evenness(I‟) (Pielou, 1966[3],1975)[4].
[1] Shannon, C.E. and Wiener, W., 1963. ` The mathematical theory of communication’, Urbana: University of Illinoise Press.
[2] May, R.M., 1975. `Patterns of species abundance and diversity’. In : Cody, M.L. and Dimond, J.M. (eds). Ecology and evolution of communities. pp.81-120, Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard university press, M.A.
[3] Pielou, E. C., 1966. `Species diversity and pattern diversity in the study of ecological succession’, J. Theor. Biol. 10: 372-383.
[4] Pileou, E.C. 1975. Ecological Diversity, pp.165, .New York: John Wiley, U.S.A.
in any case, the "second" author was wiener, and not weaver. Recently (Joss et al., several papers) demonstrated that the Shannon index does NOT measure diversity, but entropy
It is the Shannon–Wiener index.
See the new paper of Sigut et al. 2017. Avoiding erroneous citations in ecological research: read before you apply. Oikos 126: 1523–1532.
The Shannon index was created by Claude E. Shannon, an MIT mathematician who paved the way for a field in mathematics called information theory. During World War II, Shannon collaborated with mathematician Alan M.
Shannon index is an index that is used in ecology and environmental studies to quantify species diversity.
Shannon created a formula that measured information as a function of probabilities, with pi being the probability of each message:
📷 (Shannon, 1948, p. 389)
This formula was later utilized to deliver the diversity of species as well, in which pi represents the fraction of individuals that belong to the i-th species. The logic of using this formula to indicate species diversity
The Shannon index was created to effectively deliver a message concerning species richness and evenness in a given ecosystem. The index implies that as the number of species increases, or as the distribution of species becomes more even, the better the biological diversity (indicated by alarger number). The small range due to its logarithmic element in the function makes it difficult to effectively identify species diversity, but it is still an effective measure to see if similar ecosystems’ diversity is affected by either species richness or evenness.
( https://math.dartmouth.edu/~m20f11/LeeProj.docx).
Hi, I'm with Susanne, Zaal, Michael, Peter and others. Everyone seems to cite Spellerberg and Fedor (2003) and blame Krebs, but I think the correct form would be Shannon Index or Shannon Wiener (as also suggested by the already mentioned authors).
Please, use the version "Shannon index", that is the most correct alternative. I contacted prof. Shannon many years ago to find out a lot of interesting details on this matter. Some of them have been published in our paper with Ian Spellerberg in 2003
And finally a short guide to citing the Shannon index: Claude Shannon, Norbert Wiener an Warren Weaver really existed and knew each other as excellent mathematicians. Shannon invented the index 1948 and published in Bell Journal. However the book coauthored by Weaver since 1949 (many reprints) has offered more general implications. Wiener independently published many similar and supportive ideas with impact on Shannon (something like Darwin and Wallace case) .
Shannon index = best alternative
Shannon - Wiener = acceptable alternative
Shannon - Weaver = disputable alternative
Shannon - Weiner = incorrect alternative
This is one of the main errors that appear in the literature that addresses the indices of species diversity. I recommend that you review the following work:
Article A tribute to Claude Shannon (1916–2001) and a plea for more ...
Great discussion all. It seems that the Shannon Index would be the most logically defensible one. He first proposed it, even though Wiener had earlier proposed related ideas. Weaver is out in my opinion, given that he was mostly the editor of the book, and seemingly didn't provide anything novel in his historical overview. Thanks to you all for sharing this great set of information that really helps clarify matters!
Yes, it is the Shannon-Wiener index.
In a quick query in Google academic, the following results:
Shannon-Wiener has 51,400 results,
Shannon index has 41,900 results,
Shannon-Weaver has 25,900 results,
Shannon-Weiner has 14,500 results,
And as Peter Fedor mentions, both Shannon index and Shannon-Wiener index are acceptable.
Ever since I read Spellerberg & Fedor in 2003, I have used Shannon Index in my papers & lectures.
However the best alternative as Peter Fedor writes and explains, and the real correct one is just "Shannon Index"
The Shannon Index is very hard to interpret. It is just a number that does not say anything about real diversity, it cannot be accounted as a measure of diversity, it is a measurement of probability about getting a differnt "species" from a random pick. There are several books that ripes away this index, claiming that has low real world utility, especially those written around 1990 (e.g. Magurran 1988, Huston 1994, Rosensweig 1995), as it measures several variables in one single number.
There are no specific values for different species nor it measures realtive abundance of rarer species. That would be a more realistic measurement of diversity.
If Shannon - Wiener is an acceptable alternative, what will be the correct citation for the index? Peter Fedor Anna-Maria Vafeiadou
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