A tool for computing diversity and consideration on differences between diversity indices

TL;DR

This paper introduces BIODIV, a user-friendly software tool developed in Visual Basic for computing various ecological diversity indices, facilitating analysis of large datasets and revealing patterns among indices.

Contribution

The paper presents a new computational tool, BIODIV, that simplifies the calculation of multiple diversity indices for large ecological datasets.

Findings

Indices segregate into two major groups with similar expressivity

BIODIV effectively computes multiple diversity indices

Real data testing validates the tool's utility

Abstract

Diversity represents a key concept in ecology, and there are various methods of assessing it. The multitude of diversity indices are quite puzzling and sometimes difficult to compute for a large volume of data. This paper promotes a computational tool used to assess the diversity of different entities. The BIODIV software is a user-friendly tool, developed using Microsoft Visual Basic. It is capable to compute several diversity indices such as: Shannon, Simpson, Pielou, Brillouin, Berger-Parker, McIntosh, Margalef, Menhinick and Gleason. The software tool was tested using real data sets and the results were analysed in order to make assumption on the indices behaviour. The results showed a clear segregation of indices in two major groups with similar expressivity.