Abstract
It seems easy, or at least tractable, to compare the abundance of a single species in two samples. In this chapter, we introduce concepts that ecologists use to compare entire communities in two samples. We focus on two quantities: species composition, and diversity. We also discuss several issues related to this, including species–abundance distributions, ecological neutral theory, diversity partitioning, and species–area relations. Several packages in R include functions for dealing specifically with these topics.
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© 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
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Stevens, M.H.H. (2009). Community Composition and Diversity. In: Stevens, M.H.H. (eds) A Primer of Ecology with R. Use R!. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-89882-7_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-89882-7_10
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-0-387-89881-0
Online ISBN: 978-0-387-89882-7
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