Measuring biodiversity quantitatively is a key component to its investigation, but many
methods are known to be biased by undersampling (ie incomplete inventories), a common …

Complete sampling of all dimensions of biodiversity is a formidable task, even for small
areas. Undersampling is the norm, and the underquantification of diversity is a common …

Three metrics of species diversity–species richness, the Shannon index and the Simpson
index–are still widely used in ecology, despite decades of valid critiques leveled against …

Species richness is a fundamental measurement of community and regional diversity, and it
underlies many ecological models and conservation strategies. In spite of its importance …

Almost half a century after Whittaker (Ecol Monogr 30: 279–338, 1960) proposed his
influential diversity concept, it is time for a critical reappraisal. Although the terms alpha, beta …

The performance of species richness estimators can be highly variable. Evaluating the
accuracy and precision of different estimators for different assemblages is common in the …

We develop a novel class of measures to quantify sample completeness of a biological
survey. The class of measures is parameterized by an order q≥ 0 to control for sensitivity to …

Meaningful quantification of species diversity requires that both 'species' and 'diversity'are
unambiguously defined. Rigorous rules of nomenclature exist to ensure that each species …

The compositional complexity of an assemblage is not expressible as a single number;
standard measures such as diversities (Hill numbers) and entropies (Rényi entropies and …

Comparing diversities between groups is a task biologists are frequently faced with, for
example in ecological field trials or when dealing with metagenomics data. However …