Biological Diversity Frontiers in Measurement and Assessment

Biological Diversity provides an up-to-date, authoritative review of the methods of measuring and assessing biological diversity, together with their application. The book's emphasis is on quantifying the variety, abundance, and occurrence of taxa, and on providing objective and clear guidance for both scientists and managers. This is a fast-moving field and one that is the focus of intense research interest. However the rapid development of new methods, the inconsistent and sometimes confusing application of old ones, and the lack of consensus in the literature about the best approach, means that there is a real need for a current synthesis.

Biological Diversity covers fundamental measurement issues such as sampling, re-examines familiar diversity metrics (including species richness, diversity statistics, and estimates of spatial and temporal turnover), discusses species abundance distributions and how best to fit them, explores species occurrence and the spatial structure of biodiversity, and investigates alternative approaches used to assess trait, phylogenetic, and genetic diversity. The final section of the book turns to a selection of contemporary challenges such as measuring microbial diversity, evaluating the impact of disturbance, assessing biodiversity in managed landscapes, measuring diversity in the imperfect fossil record, and using species density estimates in management and conservation.

Anne Magurran is a professor at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland and an ecologist interested in the measurement, conservation and evolution of biological diversity. She has current research projects in Brazil, Trinidad and Tobago, Mexico and the UK and is the author of Ecological Diversity and its Measurement (1988) and Measuring Biological Diversity (2004).

Brian McGill is a professor at the University of Arizona. He is interested in understanding and measuring how human-caused global change (especially global warming and land cover change) affect communities of organisms. He works with large datasets from many different types of organisms and locations.

Foreword, Robert M. May
1. Challenges and Opportunities in Biodiversity Assessment, Anne E. Magurran and Brian J. McGill
PART I - BASIC MEASUREMENT ISSUES
2. An Overview of Sampling Issues in Species Diversity and Abundance Surveys, Scott A. Bonar, Jeffery S. Fehmi, and Norman Mercado-Silva
3. Biodiversity Monitoring: the Relevance of Detectability, Stephen T. Buckland, Angelika Studeny, Anne E. Magurran and Stuart E. Newson
PART II - DIVERSITY
4. Estimating Species Richness, Nicholas J. Gotelli and Robert K. Colwell
5. Measurement of Species Diversity, Brian A. Maurer and Brian J. McGill
6. Compositional Similarity and Beta Diversity, Lou Jost, Anne Chao, and Robin L. Chazdon
7. Measuring Biological Diversity in Time (and Space), Anne E. Magurran
PART III - DISTRIBUTION
8. Commonness and Rarity, Anne E. Magurran and Peter A. Henderson
9. Species Abundance Distributions, Brian J. McGill
10. Fitting and Empirical Evaluation of Models for Species Abundance Distributions, Sean R. Connolly and Maria Dornelas
11. Species Occurrence and Occupancy, Kevin J. Gaston and Fangliang He
12. Measuring the Spatial Structure of Biodiversity, Brian J. McGill
PART IV - ALTERNATIVE MEASURES OF DIVERSITY
13. A Primer of Trait Diversity, Evan Weiher
14. Measuring Phylogenetic Biodiversity, Mark Vellend, William K. Cornwell, Karen Magnuson-Ford, and Arne Ø. Mooers
15. Genetic Methods for Biodiversity Assessment, Melanie Culver, Robert Fitak and Hans-Werner Herrmann
PART V - APPLICATIONS
16. Microbial Diversity and Ecology, Lise Øvreås and Thomas P. Curtis
17. Biodiversity and Disturbance, Maria Dornelas, Candan Soykan, and Karl Inne Ugland
18. Measuring Biodiversity in Managed Landscapes, Steven L. Chown and Melodie A. McGeoch
19. Estimating Extinction with the Fossil Record, Peter J. Wagner and S. Kathleen Lyons
20. Estimating Species Density, Michael L. Rosenzweig, John Donoghue II, Yue Max Li and Chi Yuan
PART VI - CONCLUSIONS
21. Conclusions, Brian J. McGill and Anne E. Magurran
References
Index