Why is species richness and evenness important?
Why is species richness and evenness important?
Species evenness is important to biodiversity because it gives an indication of the stability of an ecosystem. Low evenness indicates that an ecosystem is dominated by few species.
How do you calculate species diversity?
It is calculated from the equation: It is estimated as (ni/N). N is total number of individuals in S species. The value of Shannon index usually varies between 1.5 and 3.5 and rarely exceeds 4.5. The value of H’ is related to species richness but is also influenced by the underlying species abundance distribution.
What are the factors that affect species diversity?
The factors related to these patterns of small- scale species richness include (1) geographic factors such as scale of observation, available species pool and dispersal patterns, (2) biotic factors such as competition or predation and (3) abiotic environmental factors such as site resource availability, disturbance and …
What is meant by species diversity?
Species diversity is the number of different species that are represented in a given community (a dataset). Meanings of species diversity may include species richness, taxonomic or phylogenetic diversity, and/or species evenness.
What does species richness tell us?
Species richness is the number of different species represented in an ecological community, landscape or region. Species richness is simply a count of species, and it does not take into account the abundances of the species or their relative abundance distributions.
What is the importance of a species?
These examples of the vital importance and practical benefits of species from a diverse set of ecosystems show the need for species conservation. Species, biodiversity and nature are the wealth of our planet, far more so than the mined materials on which we place such value to support our industrial societies.
How will increasing species diversity affects ecosystem?
Increasing species diversity can influence ecosystem functions — such as productivity — by increasing the likelihood that species will use complementary resources and can also increase the likelihood that a particularly productive or efficient species is present in the community.
What role do species play ecosystems?
Biodiversity plays an integral role in ecosystems, communities of species interacting with one another, mainly through the cycling of nutrients. Producers, mainly plants, cycle water and nutrients from soil, and create energy through photosynthesis.
Why is species richness important for an ecosystem?
The huge amount of work on the effects of species richness on ecosystem function have generally shown that with greater plant species richness, you tend to have increased primary productivity, nutrient uptake and greater stability to disturbances.
Which aquatic ecosystem has the lowest salt content?
Freshwater biomes have less than 1% salt and are typical of ponds and lakes, streams and rivers, and wetlands.