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Research Article Open access CC BY 4.0

Estimating True Species Richness and the Degree of Hierarchical Structuring of Species Abundances in Eight Frog Communities from the North-Western Ghats of India

Jean Béguinot

International Journal of Environment and Climate Change · pp. 118–137 · Published 7 Jun 2018

10.9734/ijecc/2018/v8i227147

Abstract

The Distribution of Species Abundances within natural communities – when properly analysed – can provide essential information regarding general aspects of the internal organisation of these communities. In particular, true species richness on the one hand and the intensity of the process of hierarchical structuring of species abundances on the other hand may be estimated independently and, thereby, can provide truly complementary information. In turn, specific issues may thereby be addressed. For example, whether one unique dominant factor or numerous combined factors are involved in the structuring process of a community can be tested contradictorily. Although these methods are not new conceptually, their implementation in common practice remains scarce. The reason is that the relevant implementation of these methods requires to be sure that virtually all member-species in the community have been sampled. As exhaustive samplings often reveal difficult to achieve in practice, an appropriate, least-biased procedure of numerical extrapolation of incomplete inventories is imperatively required. Considering the steadily increasing threats to the environment and biodiversity, especially facing the on-going climatic change, time has come now with ever greater urgency to go beyond the apparent limits of non-exhaustive sampling and make the most of what is available in terms of recorded field data, whatever the degree of incompleteness of species inventories. As a modest and limited attempt to concretise this wish at the local level, I try, hereafter, to highlight the importance of additional information that may be unveiled  through adequate post-analysis of a set of eight frog communities, recently inventoried by Katwate, Apte & Raut in an amphibian hot-spot in the north-western Ghats of India. At last, the likely variations of both total species richness and the intensity of hierarchical structuring of species abundance are simulated as an answer to the steadily increasing influence of the ongoing climatic change.

Species diversity species abundance rank abundance distribution amphibians anurans incomplete sampling numerical extrapolation climate change.

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Cited by 3

The Hierarchical Structuring of Species Abundances within Communities: Disentangling the Intensity of the Underlying Structuring Process behind the Apparent Unevenness Pattern

Jean Béguinot · Advances in Research · 2018

Variations in Total Species Richness and the Unevenness of Species Abundance Distribution between Two Distant Conus Communities (Neogastropoda): A Case Study in Mannar Gulf (India)

J. Béguinot · Asian Journal of Environment & Ecology · 2019

The Full Hierarchical Structuration of Species Abundances Reliably Inferred from the Numerical Extrapolation of Still Partial Samplings: A Case Study with Marine Snail Communities in Mannar Gulf (India)

J. Béguinot · Asian Journal of Environment & Ecology · 2018

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