Quantifying the responses of biological indices to rare macroinvertebrate taxa exclusion: Does excluding more rare taxa cause more error?

ABSTRACT: Including or excluding rare taxa in bioassessment is a controversial topic, which essentially affects the reliability and accuracy of the result. In the present paper, we hypothesize that biological indices such as Shannon-Wiener index, Simpson's index, Margalef index, evenness, BMWP (biological monitoring working party), and ASPT (Average Score Per Taxon) respond differently to rare taxa exclusion. To test this hypothesis, a benthic macroinvertebrate data set based on recent fifteen-year studies in China was built for suppositional plot analyses. A field research was conducted in the Nansi Lake to perform related analyses. The results of suppositional plot simulations showed that Simpson's index placed more weight on common taxa than any other studied indices, followed by Shannon-Wiener i

SUBMITTER: Yu Z 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5330898 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature