In addition to species richness, a second component of diversity of a community

Question

In addition to species richness, a second component of diversity of a community is species evenness. Evenness is the relative numbers of individuals in the sample. For Example, consider the following two hypothetical samples from different tree communities. Each sample has 100 individuals and four tree species Species Coast Redwood California Holly Coast Live Oak California Bay Laurel Community A Community B 25 93 25 25 2 25 Although the same number of species are found in the different communities- Most ecologists agree that the first sample has a higher diversity than the second. Why?

Explanation / Answer

Although it's already written here that evenness is relative no. of individual in the sample, in terms of species we can write that species evenness says how close in numbers each species in an environment is.

Mathematically it can be explained by diversity index, a measure which admeasure how equal the community is numerically.

For example- a community with 10 species where 99% of individual belong to one species is termed as less diverse than a community with 10 species.

In this ques, hypothetically, If we move in both A and B communities then we shall encounter more different species in unit area of community A rather than in unit area of community B.

So we can say that first sample has higher diversity than the second.

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