How would I obtain a single (average) list of species in such scenarios for biodiversity indices such as Shanon Weiner? For example problem as follows.
It's not possible since you have time series data. You can calculate means for each period and examine the trend :)
@AndrewPaulMcKenziePegman suppose we survey everyday for a month and now we restrict to a single variable for all species. What would we do in such case?
Hello Taniya; If the data in the field of the example are tallies of species encountered...at the end of the month the column mean is the average daily number of encounters. Is that what you are attempting to measure? Best regards, Jim Des Lauriers
Hi Tania; At the end of the month you can rank the species by;
1. evenness.
2. incidence rank
3. abundance rank.
4. if you continue sampling those species noticed in the first month will prove to be the commonest ones. At sampling continues rarer species will appear from time to time...a saturation curve is the result.
These are all simply descriptive measures. I use #4 to decide when to quit sampling a site. That is, at some point, the curve draws to an asymptote and it is assumed to have sampled the composition of the fauna. Nevertheless, there are a few remaining very rare species. Does this help? Jim Des Lauriers
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