Extending the concept of entropy-negentropy for the assessment of ecological dominance and diversity at alpha, beta and gamma levels

Abstract

Several measures of ecological diversity have been defined at alpha, beta, and gamma levels and less attention has been paid to characterise their ecological dominance. In this paper, we extend the concept of negative entropy (negentropy) for the measurement of ecological dominance and diversity at the three hierarchical levels of community characterization. Negentropy is a measure of energy, and gives a convex curve for binary negentropy function, whereas Shannon’s entropy gives a typical concave curve. Similarly, we have defined indices for Simpson’s and Brillouin’s dominance functions at alpha, beta and gamma levels. The results of diversity indices followed a trend for different sites as: Harike > Beas > Goindwal Sahib, while trend obtained for dominance is Goindwal Sahib > Beas > Harike. The pooled results of both indicated that Harike showed maximum ecological information by the application of Shannon’s diversity and Simpson’s inverse diversity, while results of Simpson’s diversity remain same for all sites.

Keywords

• entropy
• negentropy
• dominance
• shannon’s diversity
• simpson’s dominance
• brillouin’s information
• binary entropy plot
• beta diversity
• community
• phytosociology