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A Recipe for Unconventional Evenness Measures

A Recipe for Unconventional Evenness Measures The degree to which abundances are evenly divided among the species of a given community is a basic property of any biological community. Several evenness indices have thus far been proposed in ecological literature. However, despite their vast potential applicability in ecological research, none seems to be generally preferred. In this paper, I first summarize the basic requirements that evenness measures should meet to adequately behave in ecological studies. Then, I discuss the major drawbacks of these requirements and propose an alternative family of measures that are based on the notion of specificity used in fuzzy set theory for measuring the uncertainty associated with a fuzzy set. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Acta Biotheoretica Springer Journals

A Recipe for Unconventional Evenness Measures

Acta Biotheoretica , Volume 52 (2) – Oct 19, 2004

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References (33)

Publisher
Springer Journals
Copyright
Copyright © 2004 by Kluwer Academic Publishers
Subject
Philosophy; Philosophy of Biology; Evolutionary Biology
ISSN
0001-5342
eISSN
1572-8358
DOI
10.1023/B:ACBI.0000043438.41888.ac
pmid
15456986
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

The degree to which abundances are evenly divided among the species of a given community is a basic property of any biological community. Several evenness indices have thus far been proposed in ecological literature. However, despite their vast potential applicability in ecological research, none seems to be generally preferred. In this paper, I first summarize the basic requirements that evenness measures should meet to adequately behave in ecological studies. Then, I discuss the major drawbacks of these requirements and propose an alternative family of measures that are based on the notion of specificity used in fuzzy set theory for measuring the uncertainty associated with a fuzzy set.

Journal

Acta BiotheoreticaSpringer Journals

Published: Oct 19, 2004

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