Exam 3 #09

UIC BioS 101 Nyberg

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Simpson’s Diversity Index, D

• D = 1 – Σ pi2

• Species diversity, D, equals one minus the sum of the squared individual species frequencies.

• If only one species is detected D = 0, if the most common species has a low p, then D approaches the value 1.

Speaker Notes:

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A variant of the Index uses 1/ Σ pi2 as the measure of diversity. This has the advantage of generating large values when there are a lot of evenly distributed species.