On application of non—extensive statistical mechanics to studying ecological diversity

Abstract

Abstract. The concept of Tsallis entropy provides an extension of thermodynamics and statistical physics. In the ecology, Tsallis entropy is proposed to be a new class of diversity indices Sq which covers many common diversity indices found in ecological literature. As a new statistical model for the Whittaker plots describing species abundance distribution, the truncated exponential distribution is used to calculate the diversity and evenness indices. The obtained results in new model are graphically compared with those in previous publication in the same field of interests, and shows a good agreement. A further development of a thermodynamic theory of ecological systems that is consistent with entropic approach of statistical physics is motivated.