Simpson's Index of Diversity

When you have collected information about the abundance of the species in the area you are studying, you can use your results to calculate a value for the species diversity in that area using Simpson's Index of Diversity, D. One formula for this is:

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where n is the total number of organisms of a particular species, and N is the total number of all organisms of all species

• Values of D range from 0 to 1
• A value near 0 represents a very low species diversity.
• A value near 1 represents a very high species density

One advantage of this method is thay you do not need to identify all, or any, of…