Abstract:

Abstract Diversity has become an important concept in the theory and practice of ecology. Many diversity indices have been introduced from other disciplines or devised purposely by ecologists and widely used in conservation management and environmental monitoring. However, many researchers have criticized their use because different diversity indices may rank sets of communities in different ways. The use of parametric families of diversity indices instead of a diversity index with a numerical value has been suggested by Patil, Taillie and others as a potential solution to this problem. Fourteen methods were reviewed and compared in this paper. They were divided into four groups. It was proved that within-group methods are equivalent to each other and among-group methods are not. It was suggested that Patil and Taillie’s right-tail-sum diversity be the first choice and Hurlbert-Smith-Grassle’s expected diversity be the second in diversity ordering. As an example, these method were applied to three forest communities in Dongling Mountain, Beijing, China.