Monitoring change in biodiversity through composite indices

Buckland, Stephen T.; Magurran, Anne E.; Green, R.E; Fewster, Rachel M.

doi:10.1098/rstb.2004.1589

Cited by 330 publications

(319 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…Three aspects are of primary interest on a diversity study (Buckland et al 2005): number of species, overall abundance, and species evenness. We evaluated various parameters in an attempt to fully cover those three factors.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Edge effect on vascular epiphytes in a subtropical Atlantic Forest

Bianchi

Kersten

2014

Acta Bot. Bras.

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Forest fragmentation affects biological communities by reducing habitat and increasing edges, thus reducing the effective size of the habitable zones. The subtropical atlantic Araucaria forest, typical on the southern Brazil, in some regions has been reduced to less than 1% of its original size lasting only in small isolated fragments. This study aimed to analyse the impact the edge has on vascular epiphyte ensemble in a remnant of Araucaria forest. We surveyed 40 host trees in four transects: one at the edge; and three at 15, 30 and 60 m from the edge. On each host tree we estimated the epiphyte biomass, using four size classes. We compared the transects using Jackknife estimator of absolute species number, diversity indices, non-metric multi-dimensional scaling and multi-response permutation procedure analysis. We recorded 85 epiphytes species. Absolute species richness and diversity were lower at the edge and higher at 60 m in from the edge. Shannon's evenness did not differ significantly among transects and Simpson's evenness values were inconsistent. The vascular epiphyte community under study was significantly altered by the edge.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Edge effect on vascular epiphytes in a subtropical Atlantic Forest

Bianchi

Kersten

2014

Acta Bot. Bras.

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“…The concept of information entropy has been adopted in fields such as ecology as a measure of the diversity of an ecosystem (34,35). For example, if N different species occur in a region, each with an associated population density d, then p i is defined by H then serves as a measure of the biodiversity of the region under consideration, tending toward log N when all species are equally abundant and tending toward 0 when one species predominates.…”

Section: Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

A Quantitative Index of Substrate Promiscuity

2007

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Catalytic promiscuity is a widespread, but poorly understood, phenomenon among enzymes with particular relevance to the evolution of new functions, drug metabolism, and in vitro biocatalyst engineering. However, there is at present no way to quantitatively measure or compare this important parameter of enzyme function. Here we define a quantitative index of promiscuity (I) that can be calculated from the catalytic efficiencies of an enzyme toward a defined set of substrates. A weighted promiscuity index (J) that accounts for patterns of similarity and dissimilarity among the substrates in the set is also defined. Promiscuity indices were calculated for three different enzyme classes: eight serine and cysteine proteases, two glutathione S-transferase (GST) isoforms, and three cytochrome P450 (CYP) isoforms. The proteases ranged from completely specific (granzyme B, J ) 0.00) to highly promiscuous (cruzain, J ) 0.83). The four drug-metabolizing enzymes studied (GST A1-1 and the CYP isoforms) were highly promiscuous, with J values between 0.72 and 0.92; GST A4-4, involved in the clearance of lipid peroxidation products, is moderately promiscuous (J ) 0.37). Promiscuity indices also allowed for studies of correlation between substrate promiscuity and an enzyme's activity toward its most-favored substrate, for each of the three enzyme classes.

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“…In such cases great care must be taken, in analysing emergent trends, to retrospectively stratify the data (by region, taxon, etc.) and to then use weighting procedures to estimate overall trends (see Buckland et al 2005;Loh et al 2005;Cô té et al 2005;Nic Lugadha et al 2005 for guidelines). There is considerable scope for the development and wider implementation of improved methods (Buckland et al 2005) for post-stratification, and the calculation of indicators, but indicators that depend upon incomplete existing data collected for other purposes will always be weakened by the impossibility of excluding all potential sources of bias.…”

Section: Cross-cutting Issuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The 2010 challenge: data availability, information needs and extraterrestrial insights

Balmford

Crane

Dobson

et al. 2005

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

190

138

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At the 2002 Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development, 190 countries endorsed a commitment to achieve, by 2010, a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss at the global, regional and national levels. A wide range of approaches is available to the monitoring of progress towards this objective. The strengths and weaknesses of many of these approaches are considered, with special attention being given to the proposed and existing indicators described in the other papers in this issue. Recommendations are made about the development of indicators. Most existing and proposed indicators use data collected for other purposes, which may be unrepresentative. In the short term, much remains to be done in expanding the databases and improving the statistical techniques that underpin these indicators to minimize potential biases. In the longer term, indicators based on unrepresentative data should be replaced with equivalents based on carefully designed sampling programmes. Many proposed and existing indicators do not connect clearly with human welfare and they are unlikely to engage the interest of governments, businesses and the public until they do so. The extent to which the indicators already proposed by parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity are sufficient is explored by reference to the advice an imaginary scientific consultant from another planet might give. This exercise reveals that the range of taxa and biomes covered by existing indicators is incomplete compared with the knowledge we need to protect our interests. More fundamentally, our understanding of the mechanisms linking together the status of biodiversity, Earth system processes, human decisions and actions, and ecosystem services impacting human welfare is still too crude to allow us to infer reliably that actions taken to conserve biodiversity and protect ecosystem services are well chosen and effectively implemented. The involvement of social and Earth system scientists, as well as biologists, in collaborative research programmes to build and parameterize models of the Earth system to elucidate these mechanisms is a high priority.

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Monitoring change in biodiversity through composite indices

Cited by 330 publications

References 34 publications

Edge effect on vascular epiphytes in a subtropical Atlantic Forest

Edge effect on vascular epiphytes in a subtropical Atlantic Forest

A Quantitative Index of Substrate Promiscuity

The 2010 challenge: data availability, information needs and extraterrestrial insights

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