NEET Biology question
Read the given passage and answer the following question. The concept of species diversity has two components: evenness and richness. Evenness is based on the relative abundance of species. Richness is based on the total number of species present. Diversity indices combine a measure of richness and evenness. The Simpson index (C) is calculated from the following equation:
C = /
where, = importance value for each species, = total importance values. Below are data collected in two terrestrial plant communities that represent part of a successional chronosequence. In this case, importance values were measured as percent cover.
| Early Successional Community | | Late Successional Community | | |---|---|---|---| | Species | Percent Cover | Species | Percent Cover | | A | 83 | F | 24 | | B | 5 | G | 20 | | C | 9 | H | 18 | | D | 2 | I | 23 | | E | 1 | J | 15 |
The data indicate that, relative to the early successional community, the late successional community has which of the following characteristics?
Solution
Both the early community (species A-E) and the late community (species F-J) have exactly 5 species each, so species richness is the Same between the two. However, the early community's percent-cover values (83, 5, 9, 2, 1) are extremely uneven, dominated almost entirely by one species (A at 83%), whereas the late
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