Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Through the Jungle of Biological Diversity

  • Published:
Acta Biotheoretica Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Biological diversity would apparently seem the most intuitive and easily studied of all the ecological concepts. However, in practice biodiversity has suffered from great number of definitions that vary with the specific needs of the different researchers, thus making it extremely confusing as an ecological concept. In this paper, I shortly review the concept of biodiversity showing that there exists a substantial ambiguity among ecologists as far as biodiversity conceptualization and evaluation is concerned. I conclude that, due to this major disagreement on its very nature, biodiversity may be defined simply as a set of multivariate summary statistics for quantifying different characteristics of community structure.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Barker, G.M. (2002). Phylogenetic diversity: A quantitative framework for measurement of priority and achievement in biodiversity conservation. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 76: 165–194.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Crozier, R.H. (1992). Genetic diversity and the agony of choice. Biological Conservation 61: 11–15.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Diaz, S. and M. Cabido (2001). Vive la difference: Plant functional diversity matters to ecosystem processes. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 16: 646–650.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Diaz, S. and M. Cabido (1997). Plant functional types and ecosystem function in relation to global change. Journal of Vegetation Science 8: 463–474.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dukes, J.S. (2001). Biodiversity and invasibility in grassland microcosms. Oecologia 126: 563–568.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Faith, D.P. (1992). Conservation evaluation and phylogenic diversity. Biological Conservation 61: 1–10.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Faith, D.P. (1995). Phylogenic pattern and the quantification of organismal biodiversity. In: Hawksworth, D.L. (ed.). Biodiversity Measurement and Estimation, pp. 45–58. Chapman and Hall, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fonseca, C.R. and G. Ganade (2001). Species functional redundancy, random exinctions and the stability of ecosystems. Journal of Ecology 89: 118–125.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ganeshaiah, K.N., K. Chandrashekara and A.R.V. Kumar (1997). Avalanche Index: A new measure of biodiversity based on biological heterogeneity of the communities. Current Science 73: 128–133.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ganeshaiah, K.N. and R. Uma Shaanker (2000). Measuring biological heterogeneity of forest vegetation types: Avalanche Index as an estimate of biological diversity. Biodiversity and Conservation 9: 953–963.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gitay, H. and I.R. Noble (1997). What are functional types and how should we seek them? In: Smith, T.M., Shugart, H.H. and Woodward, F.I. (eds.). Plant Functional Types. Their Relavance to Ecosystem Properties and Global Change, pp. 3–19. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Good, I.J. (1979). Turing’s statistical work in World War II. Biometrika 66: 393–396.

    Google Scholar 

  • Good, I.J. (1982). Comment to Patil and Taillie (1982). Journal of the America Statistical Association 77: 561–563.

    Google Scholar 

  • Grassle, J.F., G.P. Patil, W. Smith and C. Taillie (1979). Ecological Diversity in Theory and Practice. International Cooperative Publishing House.

  • Grime, J.P. (1997). Biodiversity and ecosystem function: The debate deepens. Science 277: 1260–1261.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hengeveld, R. (1996). Measuring ecological diversity. Biodiversity Letters 3: 58–65.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hill, M.O. (1973). Diversity and evenness: A unifying notation and its consequences. Ecology 54: 427–431.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hooper, D. (1998). The role of complementarity and competition in ecosystem responses to variation in plant diversity. Ecology 79: 704–719.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hooper, D. and P.M. Vitousek (1997). The effects of plant composition and diversity on ecosystem processes. Science 277: 1302–1305.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hurlbert, S.H. (1971). The noconcept of species diversity: A critique and alternative parameters. Ecology 52: 577–586.

    Google Scholar 

  • Izsák, J. (1992). The widening range of diversity investigations. Biometrical Letters 29: 41–52.

    Google Scholar 

  • Izsák, J. and L. Papp (1995). Application of the quadratic entropy index for diversity studies on drosophilid species assemblages. Environmental and Ecological Statistics 2: 213–224.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Izsák, J. and L. Papp (2000). A link between ecological diversity indices and measures of biodiversity. Ecological Modelling 130: 151–156.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Izsák, J. and L. Szeidl (2002). Quadratic diversity: Its maximization can reduce the richness of species. Environmental and Ecological Statistics 9: 423–430.

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Magurran, A. (1988). Ecological Diversity and its Measurement. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mason, N.W.H., K. MacGillivray, J.B. Steel and J.B. Wilson (2003). An index of functional diversity. Journal of Vegetation Science 14: 571–578.

    Google Scholar 

  • Molinari, J. (1989). A calibrated index for the measurement of evenness. Oikos 56: 319–326.

    Google Scholar 

  • Naeem, S. and J.P. Wright (2003). Disentangling biodiversity effects on ecosystem functioning: deriving solutions to a seemingly insurmountable problem. Ecology Letters 6: 567–579.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nystrom, M. and C. Folke (2001). Spatial resilience of coral reefs. Ecosystems 4: 406–417.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Patil, G.P. and C. Taillie (1982). Diversity as a concept and its measurement. Journal of the American Statistical Association 77: 548–567.

    Google Scholar 

  • Petchey, O.L. and K.J. Gaston (2002). Functional diversity (FD), species richness and community composition. Ecology Letters 5: 402–411.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pielou, E.C. (1975). Ecological Diversity. Wiley, New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pielou, E.C. (1980). Review on Grassle et al. (1979). Biometrics 36: 742–743.

  • Pillar, V.D.P. (1999). On the identification of optimal plant functional types. Journal of Vegetation Science 10: 631–640.

    Google Scholar 

  • Poole, R.W. (1974). An Introduction to Quantitative Ecology. McGraw-Hill, New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Prieur-Richard, A.H. and S. Lavorel (2000). Invasions: The perspective of diverse plant communities a review. Austral Ecology 25: 1–7.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rao, C.R. (1982). Diversity and dissimilarity coefficients: A unified approach. Theoretical Population Biology 21: 24–43.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ricotta, C. (2000). From theoretical ecology to statistical physics and back: Self-similar landscape metrics as a synthesis of ecological diversity and geometrical complexity. Ecological Modelling 125: 245–253.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ricotta, C. (2002a). Measuring taxonomic diversity with parametric information functions. Community Ecology 3: 95–99.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ricotta, C. (2002b). Bridging the gap between ecological diversity indices and measures of biodiversity with Shannon’s entropy: Comment to Izsák and Papp. Ecological Modelling 152: 1–3.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ricotta, C. (2003). On parametric evenness measures. Journal of Theoretical Biology 222: 189–197.

    Article  PubMed  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Ricotta, C. (2004). A parametric diversity measure combining the relative abundances and taxonomic distinctiveness of species. Diversity and Distributions 10: 143–146.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ricotta, C. and G.C. Avena (2003). An information-theoretical measure of taxonomic diversity. Acta Biotheoretica 51: 35–41.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Rousseau, R., P. VanHecke, D. Nijssen and J. Bogaert (1999). The relationship between diversity profiles, evenness and species richness based on partial ordering. Environmental and Ecological Statistics 6: 211–223.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sarkar, S. and C. Margules (2002). Operationalizing biodiversity for conservation planning. Journal of Biosciences 27(S2): 299–308.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Shimatani, K. (2001). On the measurement of species diversity incorporating species differences. Oikos 93: 135–147.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Solow, A.R. and S. Polasky (1994). Measuring biological diversity. Environmental and Ecological Statistics 1: 95–107.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sugihara, G. (1982). Comment to Patil and Taillie (1982). Journal of the America Statistical Association 77: 564–565.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tilman, D. (1999). The ecological consequences of changes in biodiversity: A search for general principles. Ecology 80: 1455–1474.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tilman, D. and J.A. Downing (1994). Biodiversity and stability in grasslands. Nature 367: 363–365.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tilman, D., J. Knops D. Wedin, P.B. Reich, M. Ritchie and E. Siemann (1997). The influence of functional diversity and composition on ecosystem processes. Science 277: 1300–1302.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tóthmérész, B. (1995). Comparison of different methods for diversity ordering. Journal of Vegetation Science 6: 283–290.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vane-Wright, R.I., C.J. Humphries and P.M. Williams (1991). What to protect: Systematics and the agony of choice. Biological Conservation 55: 235–254.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Walker, B., A.P. Kinzig and J. Langridge (1999). Plant attribute diversity, resilience, and ecosystem function: The nature and significance of dominant and minor species. Ecosystems 2: 95–113.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Warwick, R.M. and K.R. Clarke (1995). New ‘biodiversity’ measures reveal a decrease in taxonomic distinctness with increasing stress. Marine Ecology Progress Series 129: 301–305.

    Google Scholar 

  • Weitzman, M.L. (1992). On diversity. Quarterly Journal of Economics 107: 363–405.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Plant Biology, University of Rome “La Sapienza”, Rome, Italy

    Carlo Ricotta

  2. Department of Plant Biology, University of Rome, “La Sapienza”, Piazzale Aldo Moro 5, 00185, Rome, Italy

    Carlo Ricotta

Authors
  1. Carlo Ricotta
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Carlo Ricotta.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Ricotta, C. Through the Jungle of Biological Diversity. Acta Biotheor 53, 29–38 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10441-005-7001-6

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10441-005-7001-6

Key Words

Search

Navigation