Ecosystem Diversity

The more diverse an ecosystem is, the more stable it is and more resistant it is to invasive predators. Diversity is also important for the ecosystem to be able to recover from natural disasters.

How can we measure species diversity?

Species diversity is the variety of different organisms in an ecosystem; it can be hard to measure due to very rare/microscopic and organisms

Species Richness

Species richness is the number of species there are in an ecosystem, regardless of ecosystem size

Relative Abundance

Relative abundance is the proportion of each species in an ecosystem. For example, if there are 20 monkeys out of 100 animals, the relative abundance of monkeys is 20%

Shannon Diversity Index

We can calculate the diversity of an ecosystem using the shannon diversity index

Where p_i is the proportion of each species in the ecosystem.

Still confused? Use your own values to calculate the shannon diversity index below!

Enter the proportion of each species in the ecosystem below as a percent (e.g. 50% = 50)

Show Equation

Index: 2.3025850929940455