Abstract #300619

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JSM 2003 Abstract #300619
Activity Number: 440
Type: Contributed
Date/Time: Thursday, August 7, 2003 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
Sponsor: Section on Statistics & the Environment
Abstract - #300619
Title: Bayesian Estimation of Diversity Profiles
Author(s): Christopher J. Mecklin*+
Companies: Murray State University
Address: Dept. of Mathematics and Statistics, Murray, KY, 42071,
Keywords: statistical ecology ; biodiversity ; entropy
Abstract:

A wide variety of indices exist for the measurement of ecological diversity. Common choices include the Shannon index and the Simpson index. Both of these indices are a function of the proportion of individuals found in each species. Essentially, we estimate parameters from a multinomial distribution in order to compute a diversity index. Unfortunately, the arbitrary selection of diversity index can lead to conflicting results. However, both Shannon's and Simpson's measures are special cases of Renyi entropy. Others have developed "diversity profiles," which use Renyi entropy to graphically compare the diversity index collected from different locations or from the same location over time. We extend this work by using MCMC to estimate Renyi entropy and hence construct diversity profiles. Case studies using our method will be shown.

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