The New Synthesis of Diversity Indices and Similarity Measures

 

        Measuring the diversity of a single community

 

The key point here is that, contrary to common belief, diversity indices like the Shannon entropy ("Shannon-Wiener index") and the Gini-Simpson index are not themselves diversities. They have to be converted to effective numbers of species before they can be treated as true diversities. Before reading these examples, please read the page about effective numbers of species. For a table of formulas for converting common diversity indices to effective numbers of species, see Table 1. For an Excel worksheet that does the conversion for you, download Indices to diversities.

 

Examples

Example 1: Let's take a community with 5 equally-common species:

Species name:
Species Frequency:
Species A
0.20
Species B
0.20
Species C
0.20
Species D
0.20
Species E
0.20

The species richness for this community is 5.0, the Shannon entropy (Shannon-Wiener index) is 1.609, and the Gini-Simpson index is 0.8. The Shannon-Wiener index and Simpson-Gini index are hard to interpret, and the numbers are very hard to compare with each other since they are all in different units (number of species, bits per species, and probability). They should be converted to effective number of species, which are the true diversities. By referring to Table 1 we see that species richness is already a true diversity, so the true diversity according to this index is 5.000 species. Table 1 shows that the Shannon entropy or Shannon-Wiener index is converted to effective number of species or true diversity by taking the exponential: exp(1.609) is 5.000, so the true diversity according to the Shannon entropy is also 5.000 species. The Gini-Simpson index is converted to a  true diversity by subtracting it from unity and inverting: 1/(1-0.8) = 5.000 species also. So in fact all these indices agree that the diversity of this community is 5.000 species. That's because the community is perfectly even, with no dominance. Note that true diversity is always measured in units of number of species.

Example 2: If we did Example 1 again with ten instead of five equally common species, we would get a species richness of 10, a Shannon entropy of 2.305, and a Gini-Simpson index of 0.9. It is intuitively reasonable to say that this community of 10 equally common species is twice as diverse as the community with 5 equally common species, but Shannon entropy and the Gini-Simpson index of this community are not  twice that of the community of Example 1. That's because they have not been converted to true diversities (effective number of species). Their corresponding effective numbers of species are:  exp(2.305) = 10 effective species according to Shannon entropy, and 1/(1-0.9) = 10 effective species according to the Gini-Simpson index. These are twice that of Example 1, in agreement with our intuition that this second community is twice as diverse as the one in Example 1. True diversities behave intuitively, unlike raw diversity indices.

Example 3: Now let's tackle a community with uneven species frequencies.

Species name:
Species frequency:
Species A
0.6
Species B
0.4

Its species richness is 2.0, its Shannon entropy is 0.673, and its Gini-Simpson index is 0.48. Comparing these is like comparing apples and oranges. If we convert them to effective numbers of species or true diversities, however, we can compare them. Species richness is already a true diversity. Converting Shannon entropy to effective number of species or true diversity gives exp(0.673) = 1.96 effective species, and converting the Gini-Simpson index gives 1/(1-.48) = 1.923 effective species. Note that they are no longer equal. This indicates the degree of unevenness or dominance in the community. When there is a degree of dominance, the Shannon effective number of species will be less than the species richness, and the Gini-Simpson effective number of species will be less than the Shannon effective number of species.  The greater the dominance in the community, the greater the differences between these three numbers.  This is useful information.

Species richness pays no attention to frequencies and just counts presence or absence. The Shannon entropy weighs each species exactly according to its frequency. The Gini-Simpson index pays more attention to the most dominant species since it involves the sum of the squares of the frequencies, and the square of a very small frequency is a very very small number (for example .01 squared is .0001). So uncommon species hardly contribute to the sum. That's why the effective number of species from the Gini-Simpson index will always be less than or equal to the effective number of species from the Shannon-Wiener index. That is also why the Shannon entropy is a fairer choice as a diversity index, and why it arises naturally in almost every science; it weighs species exactly by their frequencies, without favoring rare or common species.

What do we mean when we say that a community has a diversity of 15 effective species according to the Gini-Simpson index (or any other index)? We mean that,  according to the Gini-Simpson index, the community has the same diversity as a community with 15 equally-common species.

Example 4: This example is from Hill (1973). Let's take the community of Example 3 and divide each species into two equal parts, say males and females. Let's consider them as separate species, thus doubling the diversity. The frequencies are:

Species name:
Species Frequency:
Species A male
0.3
Species A  female
0.3
Species B male
0.2
Species B female
0.2

 

Intuitively, this community where we consider males and females to be distinct species should be twice as diverse as the original one. Here are the diversity indices and their effective number of species before and after splitting each species into two equal parts:

Raw diversity indices:

Value of diversity index before splitting:
Value of diversity index after splitting:
Ratio after/before splitting
Species richness
2.0
4.0
2.00
Shannon entropy
0.673
1.366
2.03
Gini-Simpson index
0.48
0.74
1.54

Effective numbers of species:

Value of effective number of species before splitting:
Value of effective number of species after splitting:
Ratio after/before splitting
Species richness
2.0
4.0
2.00
Shannon entropy
1.96
3.92
2.00
Gini-Simpson index
1.923
3.846
2.00

After splitting, the diversity indices are: species richness = 4, Shannon entropy = 1.366, and Gini-Simpson index =.74. The Shannon entropy and Gini-Simpson index of this community are not twice that of Example 3. But the true diversities (the effective numbers of species) for each index are exactly twice that of the corresponding number from Example 3, as shown in the table above.  The true diversity according to species richness went from 2 species to 4 species; the true diversity according to Shannon entropy went from 1.96 effective species to 3.92 effective species, and the true diversity according to the Gini-Simpson index went from 1.923 effectivespecies to 3.846 effective species.  This particular behavior, which Hill called the "doubling property", ensures that ratios of effective number of species behave reasonably. If one community is twice as diverse as another (in the sense of this example), the ratio of their effective numbers of species is always 2.00, regardless of the index on which this ratio is based. This is very different from the behavior of the ratio of raw indices, which can behave very counterintuitively (as we will see when treating similarity measures).

There are many diversity indices besides the ones we have used so far. Applying some of the more exotic ones to this community, I get a Simpson concentration of 0.26 and a Second-order Renyi entropy of 1.347. Converting the Simpson concentration to effective number of species, using the formula in Table 1, gives  3.846 effective species. The effective number of species of the second-order Renyi entropy, using the formula in Table 1, is the same, 3.846 effective species, and this is exactly the same effective number of species we obtained using the Gini-Simpson index. This is not an accident. Any diversity index that is a function of the sum of the squares of the frequencies has the same effective number of species for a given community. So really all these indices are the same for this application. This is the first hint of the dramatic unification that will be the subject of Part 2. All indices that are functions of the sum of the squares of the frequencies can be called "order 2 indices" and their effective number of species is the "diversity of order 2". All indices that are functions of the sum of the zeroth power of the frequencies are "order 0 indices" and their effective number of species is the "diversity of order zero", which is species richness. The effective number of species of the Shannon entropy (Shannon-Wiener index) is the "diversity of order one". I will use these terms often here.

 

 

  Which index to use?

Deciding on an index to measure the diversity of a single community is easier now that so many indices are shown to be equivalent. The only real question is which order of diversity should be used: zero, one, or two. (Higher-order diversities exist but are seldom used.) We will see later that the diversity of order one (the exponential of the Shannon entropy) is the only diversity which can be consistently decomposed into meaningful independent alpha and beta components, so it should be the standard diversity measure. It also has the advantage of favoring neither rare nor common species disproportionately; it counts all species according to their frequency. It is therefore the  "fairest" index, weighting each species exactly by its frequency in the sample. So for a general-purpose diversity study, this is the proper choice. For calculating regional alpha and beta it is the only choice. (It is also the nearly-universal choice in all other sciences.)

Under what circumstances should we use the diversity of order zero or order two? The generalized entropy formalism introduced to biology by Keylock (2005) shows that if we are especially concerned with the dominant species, we could use higher order measures. The higher the order, the more the measure emphasizes the commonest species. Because the diversity of order two is derived from a well-known measure with good sampling characteristics (Keylock 2005, Lande 1996), it is the logical choice for such studies. Conversely, when the rarest elements of a sample are as important as the commonest elements (as for example in some conservation biology applications), the diversity of order  zero, species richness, is a reasonable choice. Specially designed indices may be needed for specific purposes, as noted by Hurlbert (1971).

When we are measuring only the diversity of a single community, the trio of diversity of order zero (species richness), diversity of order one (exponential of Shannon-Wiener index) and diversity of order two (effective number of species of any Simpson index) gives more information about the samples than any single measure. In any study of a single community it makes sense to give all three. That way readers can judge the degree of dominance in the community by looking at the drops between each one. The approach of Hill (1973), who uses a continuous range of diversities and presents a graph of the results, is even better because it gives a clearer graphical picture of the degree of dominance in the community. However, I show elsewhere that only diversity of order one (the Shannon case) can be used when calculating alpha and beta diversities of multiple, unequally-weighted communities.

The prejudice often expressed against Shannon measures, and the frequent criticisms of them in the literature, are unfounded. Some authors (e.g. Lande 1996, Magurran 2004) recommend the Gini-Simpson index over Shannon entropy on the grounds that the former converges more rapidly to its final value and has an unbiased estimator. Sampling properties should not be the primary criteria for choosing a measure. More important is the measure’s ability to correctly capture the theoretical concept being studied, and only Shannon measures correctly capture the concepts of alpha and beta when community weights are unequal. It does no good to have an unbiased, rapidly-converging estimator of an index if that index doesn’t measure what one needs to measure. The recent development of a nonparametric estimator for Shannon entropy (Chao and Shen 2003)   makes these sampling criticisms even less relevent. This nonparametric estimator for Shannon entropy converges rapidly with little bias even when applied to small samples.

Another often-repeated criticism of Shannon measures is that they have no clear biological interpretation. Shannon entropy does in fact have an interpretation in terms of interspecific encounters (Patil and Taillie 1982), and both H_Shannon and exp(H_Shannon) can be related to characteristics of species keys (see Effective  number of species) and to biologically reasonable notions of uncertainty (Shannon 1948) and average rarity (Patil and Taillie 1982). Nevertheless, as with the sampling issues, this criticism is really irrelevant. If alpha and beta diversity are being studied, one chooses the measure that best captures the notions of alpha and beta, and only Shannon measures can be decomposed into meaningful independent alpha and beta components when community weights are unequal.

Some of the same authors who are critical of Shannon measures because of their sampling properties (e.g. Magurran 2004; see my review of this book here) recommend species richness and its associated similarity and overlap measures, the Jaccard and Sorensen indices. These measures have much worse sampling properties than Shannon measures (Lande 1996, Magurran 2004). Since they are completely insensitive to differences in species frequencies, they are poor choices for distinguishing communities or comparing pre- and post-treatment diversities. Real communities almost always have rare vagrants, but these measures give them the same weight as dominant species in calculating the similarity or overlap of two communities. Many authors know these shortcomings of order 0 measures but use them anyway, even when frequency data is available, because of a generalized mistrust of frequency-based diversity and similarity measures. As shown here, that mistrust of traditional diversity measures was justified, but frequency data provide important information that should be used when available. The new expressions for alpha and beta remove the anomalies of the traditional definitions, and the conversion of properly-defined frequency-based measures to their numbers equivalents makes them linear with respect to our intuitive ideas of diversity. They are now almost as easy to interpret as species richness, and much more reliable and informative. The same is true for similarity and overlap measures; the Horn index of overlap (Eq. 23) is more informative, discriminating, and reliable than either the Jaccard or Sorensen indices.

While Fisher’s alpha is not strictly a nonparametric index, it is sometimes used as if it were (Magurran 2004). However there are strong reasons to avoid this index for general use. When the data is not log-series distributed this index throws away almost all the information in the sample (since it depends only on the sample size and the number of species in the sample, not the actual species frequencies) and gives uninterpretable results. For example, a sample containing ten species with abundances
[91, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1]
has the same diversity, according to this index, as a sample containing ten species with abundances
[10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10], whereas ecologically and functionally the second community is much more diverse than the first.

There are circumstances in which biologists should not convert to effective number of species. If one is studying not diversity but some other thing, such as the way that the probability of intraspecific encounters varies between communities, or the average uncertainty in identifying a species, then it makes sense to use a measure that directly calculates the quantity of interest. But this should not be confused with true diversity.

 

Table of contents:

 

Part 1: Theoretical background


What is diversity? This is the first chapter of a book on diversity analysis that Dr. Anne Chao and I are writing under contract for Chapman and Hall publishers.

Effective number of species. This is the concept that unifies everything.

Article: Entropy and diversity. Oikos, May 2006.This provides an intuitive and productive answer to the question, "What is diversity?" It also points out problems in certain similarity measures and introduces new measures that avoid these problems. These new measures lead to the Sorensen index, Jaccard index, Morisita-Horn index, and Horn index of overlap as special cases.

Article: Partitioning diversity into independent alpha and beta components. In press, Ecology, "Concepts and Synthesis" section. Here I derive the correct expressions for alpha and beta for any diversity index. I start from first principles, asking what properties must beta have if it is to capture our theoretical idea of beta as a measure of community overlap. From these properties (which I believe are uncontroversial)  I derive the relation between alpha and beta components of any given diversity index. It turns out that there is no universal additive or multiplicative rule relating the alpha and beta components of an index. However, when the alpha and beta components of any index are converted to true diversities (effective numbers of elements), they all follow Whittaker's multiplicative law, regardless of the index on which they are based!

There is a surprise, though. The equations I derive reveal that most diversity measures have a fatal flaw. They can only be decomposed into meaningful alpha and beta components if the statistical weights of all communities are equal. It turns out that only Shannon measures give meaningful results when community weights are unequal.

I also show how diversity measures relate to similarity and overlap measures. I show a general way to derive similarity and overlap measures from diversity measures, thus ensuring logical consistency between them. Through examples I discuss the different meanings of "similarity" and give the appropriate formulas for each.

 

Part 2: Diversity


Measuring the diversity of a single community

Comparing the diversities of two communities

The fundamental unity of diversity measures

Review of Anne Magurran's Measuring Biological Diversity

 

Part 3: Alpha and beta diversity


Measuring the alpha and beta diversities of a set of communities

 

Part 4: Similarity and overlap


Different meanings of "similarity"

Measuring the homogeneity of a region

Measuring the similarity and degree of overlap of two communities

Measuring the similarity and overlap of multiple communities

 

 

 

 

The New Synthesis of Diversity Indices and Similarity Measures