Hello,
I am investigating the response of single trees and whole stands to droughts by calculating resistance and resilience indices using the Basal Area Increment of the trees. I want to figure out how the response is influenced by the species composition of the stand. The data I have is single tree data from around 1930 to 2017 with the dbh, the species and also the altitude (which could also be investigated - the importance of altitude/latitude). I am not quite sure which method is the best here to calculate the diversity and I am very grateful for any suggestion/answer.
Thank you
Hello Lukas M. Huss,
The purpose of a diversity index is to summarize two main aspects: the number of different information (e.g., number of species) and the proportion of each information in your system (e.g., relative abundance of species). The choice of a diversity index depends on the relative weight you want to attribute for each of these aspects. For example, if the number of species is more important than the relative abundance of species in your study system, I would recommend species richness as a diversity index. That may be the case of poorly saturated communities or communities with weak species interactions. On the other hand, if changes in relative abundance of species capture the most important diversity aspect of your system (this may be the case of communities strongly structured by interspecies interactions), I would recommend Simpsons diversity as a diversity index.
Of course, species richness and Simpson diversity are only two examples you can use to maximize the number of species or the relative abundance of species, respectively. There are innumerous indexes that can be used depending on the proportional contribution you want to attribute to each of these aspects. This may be confusing because you may not know which the proportional contribution for each diversity index. However, your life can be easier thanks to the physicists working with information theory. There is a unifying framework that allows you to obtain many different diversity indexes by only varying a single parameter – the q. For example, if you want species richness, you should set q tending to 0; if you want Shannon, you should set q to 1; and if you want Simpson, you should set q to 2. You can find more information in the original paper (Tsallis and 1988), or in a plenty of other papers that expanded this concept to Ecological contexts (Hill 1973; Jost 2006; Chao et al. 2014).
I hope that helps.
Chao, A., Chiu, C.H., Hsieh, T.C., Davis, T., Nipperess, D.A. and Faith, D.P., 2015. Rarefaction and extrapolation of phylogenetic diversity. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 6(4), 380-388.
Hill, M.O. (1973). Diversity and evenness: a unifying notation and its consequences. Ecology 54, 427–473.
Jost, L. (2006). Entropy and diversity. Oikos, 113, 363–375.
Tsallis, C. (1988) Possible generalization of Boltzmann-Gibbs statistics. J. Stat. Phis. 52, 479–487
Hello Lukas M. Huss,
The purpose of a diversity index is to summarize two main aspects: the number of different information (e.g., number of species) and the proportion of each information in your system (e.g., relative abundance of species). The choice of a diversity index depends on the relative weight you want to attribute for each of these aspects. For example, if the number of species is more important than the relative abundance of species in your study system, I would recommend species richness as a diversity index. That may be the case of poorly saturated communities or communities with weak species interactions. On the other hand, if changes in relative abundance of species capture the most important diversity aspect of your system (this may be the case of communities strongly structured by interspecies interactions), I would recommend Simpsons diversity as a diversity index.
Of course, species richness and Simpson diversity are only two examples you can use to maximize the number of species or the relative abundance of species, respectively. There are innumerous indexes that can be used depending on the proportional contribution you want to attribute to each of these aspects. This may be confusing because you may not know which the proportional contribution for each diversity index. However, your life can be easier thanks to the physicists working with information theory. There is a unifying framework that allows you to obtain many different diversity indexes by only varying a single parameter – the q. For example, if you want species richness, you should set q tending to 0; if you want Shannon, you should set q to 1; and if you want Simpson, you should set q to 2. You can find more information in the original paper (Tsallis and 1988), or in a plenty of other papers that expanded this concept to Ecological contexts (Hill 1973; Jost 2006; Chao et al. 2014).
I hope that helps.
Chao, A., Chiu, C.H., Hsieh, T.C., Davis, T., Nipperess, D.A. and Faith, D.P., 2015. Rarefaction and extrapolation of phylogenetic diversity. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 6(4), 380-388.
Hill, M.O. (1973). Diversity and evenness: a unifying notation and its consequences. Ecology 54, 427–473.
Jost, L. (2006). Entropy and diversity. Oikos, 113, 363–375.
Tsallis, C. (1988) Possible generalization of Boltzmann-Gibbs statistics. J. Stat. Phis. 52, 479–487
There are no rules in ecological experiments, so you can use any index. But you can use the Shannon diversity index (H) to characterize species diversity in a community because it accounts for both abundance and evenness of the species present.
Gazol, A., & Camarero, J. J. (2016). Functional diversity enhances silver fir growth resilience to an extreme drought. Journal of Ecology, 104(4), 1063-1075.
Bastida, F., López-Mondéjar, R., Baldrian, P., Andrés-Abellán, M., Jehmlich, N., Torres, I. F., ... & López-Serrano, F. R. (2019). When drought meets forest management: Effects on the soil microbial community of a Holm oak forest ecosystem. Science of The Total Environment, 662, 276-286.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Entomology
- Resistance