BISC 204 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Tennessee Technological University, Species Richness, Diversity Index
15 Mar 2016
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
From: general ecology labs, dr. chris brown, tennessee technological university and. Ecology on campus, dr. robert kingsolver, bellarmine university. Biodiversity describes the number and abundance of species inhabiting a community, habitat or other described area. The most basic measure of biodiversity is species richness (s), a total count of species present in the defined area. However, species richness does not give a complete picture of biodiversity. This question is easier to ask than to answer, because we have discovered and described only a fraction of the earth"s biota. Most large terrestrial organisms, such as birds and mammals, are so well inventoried that discovery of a new species in these taxonomic groups is a newsworthy event. At the other extreme are soil bacteria, often impossible to culture in standard media, and so poorly studied that there are probably a number of undescribed species thriving beneath your grounds.
