Biodiversity assessment in incomplete inventories: leaf litter ant communities in several types of Bornean rain forest.

ABSTRACT: Biodiversity assessment of tropical taxa is hampered by their tremendous richness, which leads to large numbers of singletons and incomplete inventories in survey studies. Species estimators can be used for assessment of alpha diversity, but calculation of beta diversity is hampered by pseudo-turnover of species in undersampled plots. To assess the impact of unseen species, we investigated different methods, including an unbiased estimator of Shannon beta diversity that was compared to biased calculations. We studied alpha and beta diversity of a diverse ground ant assemblage from the Southeast Asian island of Borneo in different types of tropical forest: diperocarp forest, alluvial forest, limestone forest and heath forests. Forests varied in plant composition, geology, flooding regimes a

SUBMITTER: Pfeiffer M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3398027 | biostudies-literature | 2012

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature