Tree species calculations

Rayees Malik and Joy M. Monteiro

Introduction

We considered two communities of trees, one around the airstrip (site A)and another in the CES reasearch site (site B) next to the new Biological sciences building. e areas were sampled using the quadrat method and 8 quadrats of 10m10m were used for each of the areas. We only counted those trees which had a girth (at breast height) of 30 cm or above. For the collected data, since the sampling was complete within each quadrat, we directly get a value for the local () species richness. We then estimate the global () richness by using the Chao-2 estimator. We use the Chao-2 estimator since it has been seen to give a good estimate of the asymptotic value of species richness at low sample sizes([1]) as compared to the other estimators, and also because it works at the quadrat level rather than at individual level. We then calculate a non-directional ([2]) diversity value given by Whiaker (= / ) within each community of species . For each community, the Shannon-Wiener index is also calculated, which is interpreted as a measure for evenness of distribution of species by comparing it with a uniform distribution of species. e Simpsons index is also calculated and compared with the Shannon-Wiener index. en, the Shannon diversity index is calculated and compared with the classical Whiaker index.

Results

We found 16 species of trees in the airstrip wooded area and 20 species in the CES research area in our quadrats. e species accumulation curves for both are as shown below. both curves seem to saturate by the end of our sampling. is could, however, be an artefact of small amount of samples and due to the fact that some areas were not sampled due to their being dicult to

Figure 1: Species Accumulation Curves for the Airstrip 1

Figure 2: Species Accumulation Curves for the CES Research area reach or construction work obstructing sampling. Since some of the species of trees remained unidentied, we did not calculate a species turnover index between the two communities, though we noticed that the communities had very dierent species. Using the Chao-2 estimator, we calculated the global species richness () in A to be 26 species and B to be 31 species. e average local richness ( ) was found to be 3.875 and 4.125 respectively. e classical Whiaker index for -diversity was then calculated (presented in the following table). e Chao-2 estimator is given by Schao = Sobs + L2 /2M (1) where L is the number of species observed in one quadrat alone and M is the number of species observed in two quadrats only. Since the Chao-2 estimator only takes into consideration presence-absence information, it implicitly weights rare species strongly and this can lead to a higher value of diversity. We therefore use the Shannon-Wiener index to calculate the eective diversity since it takes into account relative abundance information. e eective diversity is given by H = exp(Hpooled ) (2)

where Hpooled = pi ln(pi ) is the Shannon-Wiener index calculated for pooled data from our sample. is index gives a much lower value of eective diversity than just indicated by the species richness calculated by the Chao-2 estimator. We also calculate the Simpsons reciprocal index of diversity which again gives an estimate of diversity very close to the eective diversity calculated from the ShannonWiener index. e values of the Simpsons reciprocal index are not close to their maximum value (=the number of species), indicating that the communities are not evenly balanced. e intra-community -diversity, which gives a measure of how diverse the entire community is as compared to our sampling quadrat, also reects this rare/abundant species distinction. e shannon index, which takes into account the relative abundance information and is dened as shannon = exp(Hpooled )/exp(Hi ) where Hi is the Shannon-Wiener index calculated for each quadrat. 2 (3)

B 4.125 31 W 7.52 H 15.867 Simpsons 13.58 H 3.5662 shannon 4.4494

A 3.875 26 6.71 11.836 10.45 3.29 3.597

Table 1: Results for the two areas sampled

Discussion

It is noticed from the table above that the relative values of the diversity indices are not qualitatively dierent regardless of the index used to measure it. However, we notice that the -diversity calculated weighting dominant communities is much lower than that calculated from presence-absence information. is indicates that some species are rare, something that also comes out of the Simpsons reciprocal index. is is also borne out in the histogram of the species presented in the next page. e CES research area, though smaller in area than the airstrip, seems to be comparable in species richness and diversity to it, given the limitations of sampling. ough the two areas are divided by a single road, they seem to have very dierent species compositions, indicating that the species turnover in the area is high (though we have not quantied it). Drawing from results of the other students, it seems like these areas support a much larger number of species than Jubilee Gardens or the main adrangle.

References
[1] Colwell, R. K., and Coddington, J. A. 1994. Estimating terrestrial biodiversity through extrapolation. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (Series B) 345:101-118. [2] Anderson M. J., T. O. Crist, J. M. Chase, M. Vellend, B. D. Inouye, A. L. Freestone, N. J. Sanders, H. V. Cornell, L. S. Comita, K. F. Davies, S. P. Harrison, N. J. B. Kra, J. C. Stegen, N. G. Swenson. 2011. Navigating the multiple meanings of diversity: a roadmap for the practicing ecologist. Ecology Leers 14: 19-28.

Species histogram - Airstrip

7 6
Number of species

5 4 3 2 1 0 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16
Number of individuals

Species histogram - CES RA

8 7 6
Number of species

5 4 3 2 1 0 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16
Number of individuals

Figure 3: Abundance curves 4