<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>Biodiversity refers to genetic, species and ecosystems varieties within an area. Two main characteristics that should be investigated when considering biodiversity are richness and evenness. Richness is related to the number of different species in the analyzed area, while evenness corresponds to the homogeneity of the abundance of species. For quantifying these features, many indices have been defined, and this paper offers an overview of the most commonly used biodiversity indices, such as Shannon, Simpson, Margalef and Berger-Parker. The paper explains the process of calculating these indices on the case study example of four forest communities and discusses the results obtained. The Jaccard index analysis is used to discover a similarity between the analyzed forest communities. Results from this part of the research are visualized by creating appropriate dendrograms for making the interpretation easier. Calculating and analyzing these indices is useful not only for forest ecosystems, but for the other types of ecosystems as well, including agro-ecosystems. Biodiversity indices can be obtained in thespecialized software, for instance in EstimateS (Statistical Estimation of Species Richness and Shared Species from Samples), or by programming in the statistical package R, as it was done in this research.</p></abstract>

Biodiversity refers to genetic, species and ecosystems varieties within an area. Two main characteristics that should be investigated when considering biodiversity are richness and evenness. Richness is related to the number of different species in the analyzed area, while evenness corresponds to the homogeneity of the abundance of species. For quantifying these features, many indices have been defined, and this paper offers an overview of the most commonly used biodiversity indices, such as Shannon, Simpson, Margalef and Berger-Parker. The paper explains the process of calculating these indices on the case study example of four forest communities and discusses the results obtained. The Jaccard index analysis is used to discover a similarity between the analyzed forest communities. Results from this part of the research are visualized by creating appropriate dendrograms for making the interpretation easier. Calculating and analyzing these indices is useful not only for forest ecosystems, but for the other types of ecosystems as well, including agro-ecosystems. Biodiversity indices can be obtained in thespecialized software, for instance in EstimateS (Statistical Estimation of Species Richness and Shared Species from Samples), or by programming in the statistical package R, as it was done in this research.

Measuring Biodiversity in Forest Communities – A Role of Biodiversity Indices

Contemporary Agriculture

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Biodiversity refers to genetic, species and ecosystems varieties within an area. Two main characteristics that should be investigated when considering...

Measuring Biodiversity in Forest Communities – A Role of Biodiversity Indices

Published Online: Mar 09, 2018

Page range: 65 - 70

Received: Jun 09, 2017

Accepted: Dec 18, 2017

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/contagri-2018-0010

Keywords
biodiversity, indices, forest communities

© 2018 Milena Lakićević et al., published by De Gruyter Open

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Measuring Biodiversity in Forest Communities – A Role of Biodiversity Indices

Published Online: Mar 09, 2018

Page range: 65 - 70

Received: Jun 09, 2017

Accepted: Dec 18, 2017

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/contagri-2018-0010

Keywordsbiodiversity, indices, forest communities

© 2018 Milena Lakićević et al., published by De Gruyter Open

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Keywords
biodiversity, indices, forest communities