On the Efficiency of Some Alpha Diversity Indices: A Simulation Study Using Bootstrap Resampling

It is essential to measure biodiversity to determine the stability of a community of species. A good measure gives precise, reliable, and efficient information about the community structure. This study was conducted to evaluate the statistical properties and test some alpha diversity indices’ efficiency through a bootstrap resampling. The available birds’ data were being applied in some alpha diversity indices. Moreover, the ShapiroWilk test is being used to test the normality of the index. All indices analyzed have pvalues higher than the alpha level of significance (α=0.05), indicating that the index’s bootstrap sampling distribution is normally distributed. Mostly, all indices are consistently efficient at large sample sizes. The Menhinick richness index is more efficient in measuring birds’ species richness since it has the smallest means squared error (MSE) values. Among the diversity indices studied in this paper, Simpson’s diversity index generated smaller mean squared error (MSE) values; thus, it is a more efficient diversity index in measuring birds’ diversity. The Shannon evenness index is more efficient among the five evenness indices in measuring species evenness of birds because it provides the smaller MSE values.