Environmental DNA
Environmental DNA or eDNA is DNA that is collected from a variety of environmental samples such as soil, seawater, snow or air, rather than directly sampled from an individual organism. As various org
Range condition scoring
Range Condition Scoring was developed as a way to quantify biodiversity in a given rangeland system. This practice is widely used in the Sand Hills region of Nebraska, as well as the tallgrass prairie
Phylogenetic diversity
Phylogenetic diversity is a measure of biodiversity which incorporates phylogenetic difference between species. It is defined and calculated as "the sum of the lengths of all those branches that are m
Floristic Quality Assessment
Floristic Quality Assessment (FQA) is a tool used to assess an area's ecological integrity based on its plant species composition. Floristic Quality Assessment was originally developed in order to ass
Species diversity
Species diversity is the number of different species that are represented in a given community (a dataset). The effective number of species refers to the number of equally abundant species needed to o
Beta diversity
In ecology, beta diversity (β-diversity or true beta diversity) is the ratio between regional and local species diversity. The term was introduced by R. H. Whittaker together with the terms alpha dive
Alpha diversity
In ecology, alpha diversity (α-diversity) is the mean species diversity in a site at a local scale. The term was introduced by R. H. Whittaker together with the terms beta diversity (β-diversity) and
Bray–Curtis dissimilarity
In ecology and biology, the Bray–Curtis dissimilarity, named after J. Roger Bray and John T. Curtis, is a statistic used to quantify the compositional dissimilarity between two different sites, based
Species richness
Species richness is the number of different species represented in an ecological community, landscape or region. Species richness is simply a count of species, and it does not take into account the ab
Species evenness
Species evenness refers to how close in numbers each species in an environment is. Mathematically it is defined as a diversity index, a measure of biodiversity which quantifies how equal the community
Measurement of biodiversity
Conservation biologists have designed a variety of objective means to measure biodiversity empirically. Each measure of biodiversity relates to a particular use of the data. For practical conservation
Aquatic biomonitoring
Aquatic biomonitoring is the science of inferring the ecological condition of rivers, lakes, streams, and wetlands by examining the organisms (fish, invertebrates, insects, plants, and algae) that liv
Rarefaction (ecology)
In ecology, rarefaction is a technique to assess species richness from the results of sampling. Rarefaction allows the calculation of species richness for a given number of individual samples, based o
All-taxa biodiversity inventory
An all-taxa biodiversity inventory, or ATBI, is an attempt to document and identify all biological species living in some defined area, usually a park, reserve, or research area. The term was coined i
Bioindicator
A bioindicator is any species (an indicator species) or group of species whose function, population, or status can reveal the qualitative status of the environment. The most common indicator species a
Biosurvey
A biosurvey, or biological survey, is a scientific study of organisms to assess the condition of an ecological resource, such as a water body.
Gamma diversity
In ecology, gamma diversity (γ-diversity) is the total species diversity in a landscape. The term was introduced by R. H. Whittaker together with the terms alpha diversity (α-diversity) and beta diver
Indicator value
Indicator value is a term that has been used in the ecology of plants for two different indices. The older usage of the term refers to Ellenberg's indicator values from 1974, which are based on a simp
Diversity index
A diversity index is a quantitative measure that reflects how many different types (such as species) there are in a dataset (a community), and that can simultaneously take into account the phylogeneti
Zeta diversity
In ecology, zeta diversity (ζ-diversity), first described in 2014, measures the degree of overlap in the type of taxa present between a set of observed communities. It was developed to provide a more
Species pool
The ecological and biogeographical concept of the species pool describes all species available that could potentially colonize and inhabit a focal habitat area.The concept lays emphasis on the fact th