Biodiversity and research methodology

This topic I am discussing today may be completely new,most of us may be unaware of it. But we are aware of our biodiversity and number of species observed around us.

Now lets calculate the bioDiversity index of our homegarden in lockdown and quarantine days.

What we should do to calculate the diversity index?

Its very simple guys, calculate the number of individual plant recorded in your home garden. Eg. If you have 12 plants of marigold then record as marigold=12 and so on.

Accordingly you will get population of all the species. Now we are calculating the diversity indices. Diversity index and their significance are listed as:

Shannon Weiner diversity: values of diversity lies between 1.5-3.5, greater than 3.5 is very rare [1], [2].

Equation is presented in picture where;

 H = the Shannon index;

 Pi = fraction of the entire population made of species i

 S = number of species encountered;

 ∑ = sum from species to species and

ln= natural logarithm to the base e

(log).

Simpson 1-D:  The measure of diversity which reveals that higher the value of 1-D higher is the sample diversity and value lies between 0 and 1 [1], [3]–[5].

 Equation is presented in picture Where n= total number of particular species; N = total number of all species sampled; D= Simpson index.

Lets try this in all of our home gardens I have recorded 89 species in my home garden and Shannon diversity index was 3.34.

Is there any calculation shortcuts?

Yes, there'S calculation shortcuts. You can calculate using Ms excel and PAST 4.0.1 [6]. Past being a data analysis software not only these indices are calculate more information on your home garden can be elaborated.

This research methodology is adopted in most of the ecological studies for calculating ecosystem diversity. Here we have tried to explain in terms of homegarden diversity.

Thank you

Sandesh Thapa

References

[1]      A. Magurran, “Measuring Biologcial Diversity,” Blackwell Publishing. p. 256, 2004.

[2]      R. K. Peet, “The Measurement of Species Diversity,” Annu. Rev. Ecol. Syst., vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 285–307, 1974.

[3]      A. A. Semu, “The Study of Homegarden Agrobiodiversity, Practices of Homegardening and Its Role for <i>In-Situ</i> Conservation of Plant Biodiversity in Eastern Hararghe, Kombolcha Town Oromia Regional State Ethiopia,” Open J. For., vol. 08, no. 02, pp. 229–246, 2018.

[4]      kerekhoff, “Measuring biodiversity of ecological communities,” 2010.

[5]      A. J. Daly, J. M. Baetens, and B. De Baets, “Ecological diversity: Measuring the unmeasurable,” Mathematics, vol. 6, no. 7, 2018.

[6]      D. A. T. Hammer, P. D. Ryan, Ø. Hammer, and D. A. T. Harper, “Past: Paleontological Statistics Software Package for Education and Data Analysis,” 2001.