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Evaluation of the estimate bias magnitude of the Rao’s quadratic diversity index

Rao’s quadratic diversity index is one of the most widely applied diversity indices in functional and phylogenetic ecology. The standard way of computing Rao’s quadratic diversity index for an ecological assemblage with a group of species with varying abundances is to sum the functional or phylogene...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Chen, Youhua, Wu, Yongbin, Shen, Tsung-Jen
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6037161/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30002990
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.5211
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author Chen, Youhua
Wu, Yongbin
Shen, Tsung-Jen
author_facet Chen, Youhua
Wu, Yongbin
Shen, Tsung-Jen
author_sort Chen, Youhua
collection PubMed
description Rao’s quadratic diversity index is one of the most widely applied diversity indices in functional and phylogenetic ecology. The standard way of computing Rao’s quadratic diversity index for an ecological assemblage with a group of species with varying abundances is to sum the functional or phylogenetic distances between a pair of species in the assemblage, weighted by their relative abundances. Here, using both theoretically derived and observed empirical datasets, we show that this standard calculation routine in practical applications will statistically underestimate the true value, and the bias magnitude is derived accordingly. The underestimation will become worse when the studied ecological community contains more species or the pairwise species distance is large. For species abundance data measured using the number of individuals, we suggest calculating the unbiased Rao’s quadratic diversity index.
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spelling pubmed-60371612018-07-12 Evaluation of the estimate bias magnitude of the Rao’s quadratic diversity index Chen, Youhua Wu, Yongbin Shen, Tsung-Jen PeerJ Biodiversity Rao’s quadratic diversity index is one of the most widely applied diversity indices in functional and phylogenetic ecology. The standard way of computing Rao’s quadratic diversity index for an ecological assemblage with a group of species with varying abundances is to sum the functional or phylogenetic distances between a pair of species in the assemblage, weighted by their relative abundances. Here, using both theoretically derived and observed empirical datasets, we show that this standard calculation routine in practical applications will statistically underestimate the true value, and the bias magnitude is derived accordingly. The underestimation will become worse when the studied ecological community contains more species or the pairwise species distance is large. For species abundance data measured using the number of individuals, we suggest calculating the unbiased Rao’s quadratic diversity index. PeerJ Inc. 2018-07-06 /pmc/articles/PMC6037161/ /pubmed/30002990 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.5211 Text en © 2018 Chen et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Biodiversity
Chen, Youhua
Wu, Yongbin
Shen, Tsung-Jen
Evaluation of the estimate bias magnitude of the Rao’s quadratic diversity index
title Evaluation of the estimate bias magnitude of the Rao’s quadratic diversity index
title_full Evaluation of the estimate bias magnitude of the Rao’s quadratic diversity index
title_fullStr Evaluation of the estimate bias magnitude of the Rao’s quadratic diversity index
title_full_unstemmed Evaluation of the estimate bias magnitude of the Rao’s quadratic diversity index
title_short Evaluation of the estimate bias magnitude of the Rao’s quadratic diversity index
title_sort evaluation of the estimate bias magnitude of the rao’s quadratic diversity index
topic Biodiversity
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6037161/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30002990
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.5211
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AT wuyongbin evaluationoftheestimatebiasmagnitudeoftheraosquadraticdiversityindex
AT shentsungjen evaluationoftheestimatebiasmagnitudeoftheraosquadraticdiversityindex