Biodiversity within plant based communities

By the end of this session you will:

• Describe how you can investigate plant populations including estimating population number

• Outline to a variety of ways in which biodiversity can be determined including Simpson’s Index of Biodiversity

• Identify advantages/disadvantages of these measurements of Biodiversity

So what is Biodiversity?

How can we measure biodiversity?

• Species richness

• Species evenness

So why is Simpson’s Index of Biodiversity a better indication of Biodiversity?

Link summarising Simpson's Index of Biodiversity

IMPORTANT It is not the formula or which formula you are given, it is how to interpret the values from 0 to 1 that you need to get your head around