A Recipe for Unconventional Evenness Measures

Author: C. Ricotta

Source: Acta Biotheoretica, Volume 52, Number 2, 2004 , pp. 95-104(10)

Publisher: Springer

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Abstract:

The degree to which abundances are evenly divided among the species of a given community is a basic property of any biological community. Several evenness indices have thus far been proposed in ecological literature. However, despite their vast potential applicability in ecological research, none seems to be generally preferred. In this paper, I first summarize the basic requirements that evenness measures should meet to adequately behave in ecological studies. Then, I discuss the major drawbacks of these requirements and propose an alternative family of measures that are based on the notion of specificity used in fuzzy set theory for measuring the uncertainty associated with a fuzzy set.

Keywords: continuity; fuzzy sets; Lorenz order; possibility distributions; specificity

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/B:ACBI.0000043438.41888.ac

Affiliations: 1: Department of Plant Biology, University of Rome “La Sapienza”, Piazzale Aldo Moro 5, 00185 Rome, Italy., Email: carlo.ricotta@uniroma1.it

Publication date: 2004-01-01