Measurement of biodiversity

Main article: Biodiversity
Polar bears on the sea ice of the Arctic Ocean, near the north pole.

Conservation biologists have designed a variety of objective means to measure biodiversity empirically. Each measure of biodiversity relates to a particular use of the data. For practical conservationists, measurements should include a quantification of values that are commonly shared among locally affected organisms, including humans. For others, a more economically defensible definition should allow the ensuring of continued possibilities for both adaptation and future use by humans, assuring environmental sustainability.

As a consequence, biologists argue that this measure is likely to be associated with the variety of genes. Since it cannot always be said which genes are more likely to prove beneficial, the best choice for conservation is to assure the persistence of as many genes as possible. For ecologists, this latter approach is sometimes considered too restrictive, as it prohibits ecological succession.

Taxonomic Diversity

Biodiversity is usually plotted as taxonomic richness of a geographic area, with some reference to a temporal scale. Whittaker[1] described three common metrics used to measure species-level biodiversity, encompassing attention to species richness or species evenness:

Recently, another new index has been invented called the Mean Species Abundance Index (MSA); this index calculates the trend in population size of a cross section of the species. It does this in line with the CBD 2010 indicator for species abundance.[2]

Other Measures of Diversity

Alternatively, other types of diversity may be plotted against a temporal timescale:

A few studies have attempted to quantitatively clarify the relationship between different types of diversity. For example, Sarda Sahney a researcher at the University of Bristol has found a close link between vertebrate taxonomic and ecological diversity.[3]

Other authors tried to organize the measurements of biodiversity in the following way:[4]

Scale

Diversity may be measured at different scales. These are three indices used by ecologists:

See also

References

  1. ↑ Whittaker, R.H., Evolution and measurement of species diversity, Taxon, 21, 213–251 (1972)
  2. ↑ MSA Index (page 4)
  3. ↑ Sahney, S., Benton, M.J. and Ferry, P.A. (2010). "Links between global taxonomic diversity, ecological diversity and the expansion of vertebrates on land" (PDF). Biology Letters 6 (4): 544–547. doi:10.1098/rsbl.2009.1024. PMC 2936204. PMID 20106856.
  4. ↑ Cianciaruso, M.V., Silva, I.A. & Batalha, M.A. Diversidades filogenética e funcional: novas abordagens para a Ecologia de comunidades. Biota Neotrop. 9(3): .
  5. ↑ Sahney, S. and Benton, M.J. (2008). "Recovery from the most profound mass extinction of all time" (PDF). Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological 275 (1636): 759–65. doi:10.1098/rspb.2007.1370. PMC 2596898. PMID 18198148.
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