Species Area Curves

I wish that referred to a woman's body type. Nooooo! Instead it hearkens to sloping mountain terrain, plot-making mishaps, frustrated team members, and rowdy arguments over whether one leaf's vein pattern matches that of another one. Grrr. The exercise was so tedious, too. I wonder if there's another way to measure species diversity, I mean, maybe a proxy or something. Of course it wouldn't be as precise but good grief counting and identifying all those plants was crazy!

I was a bit confused about what the difference is between species richness and species evenness. I just looked it up and got this:

Species richness: number of species.
Species evenness: relative abundance of each species.

Evenness is especially insightful to the diversity and health of an ecosystem, since evenness is sensitive to disturbance. That is, evenness tells how much of species A exists in a given area. If there is a disturbance, a hurricane for instance, and species A decreases in abundance, the evenness measure will reflect that. Species A will still exist according to species richness, but there will be no indication of disturbance.

Also in this article are some very interesting takes on diversity. Benefits of diversity include: support for diverse herbivores and insects, genetic diversity-->resilience, soil enrichment, filled niches to avoid invasion. Disadvantages of diversity include: indication of disturbance species, managing challenges for agricultural purposes. The most I've heard of biodiversity is the resilience benefit, which is cool, but I wasn't sure how that connected with the ecosystem benefits we affirmed as a byproduct of biodiversity in the conbio lecture.

As a sustainable development student, the article especially intrigued me because it appears to be directed toward the agricultural sector, a sector that contributes much to deforestation for agriculture and grazing, and thus the loss of biodiversity. But here, agrarians are being taught about the pros and cons of biodiversity...ideally they would appreciate biodiversity. But I can't help but dread the effect of market pressures and the greater impact of large agribusinesses.

http://www.cnr.uidaho.edu/range357/notes/Diversity.pdf