Species Diversity

The following terminology should be part of your working vocabulary:

You should be able to do the following kinds of things:

1. Describe the general concept of species diversity as a way of looking at communities (see pp. 539-551).

2. Distinguish between species richness and species importance as a way of looking at communities.

3. Describe how models like the broken-stick and geometric and lognormal distributions have been useful in formalizing the concept of species diversity.

4. Discuss advantages and disadvantages of using indexes such as the species richness index or information index as measures of community structure.

5. Read Chapter 36 and identify as many factors as you can that regulate the numbers of species comprising communities. Once you have done that, generate a model that brings these factors together to set the structure and diversity of a community.

6. State 5 hypotheses that suggest why the diversity of species is so high in the Tropics.

7. Describe Paine's work on the control of community structure (pp. 442-445).

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