Comparison of diversity indices applied to macrophyte incidence-based data

Abstract

In this work, a recently proposed diversity index based on Patil and Taillie parametric diversity measure (or Tsallis entropy), Sq*, was applied to samples (presence-absence data) of macrophytes from the Itaipu Reservoir, Brazil. This new index was the value of the family of indices Sq for a specific evenness of a sample. Results demonstrated that the Shannon index and species richness showed expressively high correlation with the Sq*; however, the evenness had low correlation coefficients with the index Sq*, indicating that Sq* was particularly sensitive to rarity and species richness. On the other hand, the weak correlations of this index with evenness demonstrated that it was less sensitive to species relative abundances.

Keywords

• Tsallis entropy
• macrophytes
• reservoir
• Shannon
• Simpson