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Activity Number:
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345
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Type:
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Contributed
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Date/Time:
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Tuesday, August 8, 2006 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
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Sponsor:
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Section on Statistics and the Environment
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| Abstract - #306646 |
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Title:
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A Study of the Type I and Type II Error Rates of Tests for Species Diversity Based on Shannon and Simpson's Indexes of Diversity
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Author(s):
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Lewis VanBrackle*+ and Kristina Corts
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Companies:
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Kennesaw State University and Kennesaw State University
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Address:
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1980 Towne Manor Drive, Kennesaw, GA, 30144,
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Keywords:
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hypothesis tests ; type I error ; power ; species diversity
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Abstract:
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Ecologists routinely test for equality of species diversity in two communities using test statistics with approximate t and Normal distributions based on Shannon's and Simpson's diversity indices. However, the type I and type II error rates of these tests are not well known. We performed simulation studies of these tests under broken-stick, geometric and extreme population models to examine their achieved alpha levels and power. For populations with few species, we found the tests to be conservative and to have rather low power for detecting levels of differences in species diversity that may be of interest to ecologists.
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