Alpha diversity measures (skbio.diversity.alpha)#

This package provides implementations of various alpha diversity [1] metrics, including measures of richness, diversity, evenness, dominance, and coverage.

Some functions generate confidence intervals (CIs). These functions have the suffix _ci.

Richness metrics#

Richness [2] measures the number of species (taxa) in a community.

Due to incomplete sampling, the number of observed species (sobs) in a sample is usually lower than the true number of species in the community. Metrics have been proposed to estimate the latter based on the distribution of observed species in the sample.

ace

Calculate the ACE metric (Abundance-based Coverage Estimator).

chao1

Calculate Chao1 richness estimator.

chao1_ci

Calculate Chao1 confidence interval.

doubles

Calculate number of double-occurrence taxa (doubletons).

faith_pd

Calculate Faith's phylogenetic diversity (Faith's PD) metric.

margalef

Calculate Margalef's richness index.

menhinick

Calculate Menhinick's richness index.

michaelis_menten_fit

Calculate Michaelis-Menten fit to rarefaction curve of observed taxa.

observed_features

Calculate the number of distinct features.

osd

Calculate observed taxa, singletons, and doubletons.

singles

Calculate number of single-occurrence taxa (singletons).

sobs

Calculate the observed species richness of a sample.

Diversity metrics#

Diversity [3] measures the number and relative abundances of species (taxa) in a community. It combines richness and evenness.

Some diversity metrics describe the effective number of species (a.k.a., true diversity) – the number of equally-abundant species that produce the same diversity measurement.

brillouin_d

Calculate Brillouin's diversity index.

enspie

Calculate ENS_pie alpha diversity measure.

fisher_alpha

Calculate Fisher's alpha, a metric of diversity.

hill

Calculate Hill number.

inv_simpson

Calculate inverse Simpson index.

kempton_taylor_q

Calculate Kempton-Taylor Q index of alpha diversity.

phydiv

Calculate generalized phylogenetic diversity (PD) metrics.

renyi

Calculate Renyi entropy.

shannon

Calculate Shannon's diversity index.

simpson

Calculate Simpson's diversity index.

tsallis

Calculate Tsallis entropy.

Evenness metrics#

Evenness [4] (or equitability) measures the closeness of species (taxa) in a community in terms of abundance (number of individuals within the species). The calculation of evenness involves the relative abundances of species.

heip_e

Calculate Heip's evenness measure.

mcintosh_e

Calculate McIntosh's evenness measure.

pielou_e

Calculate Pielou's evenness index.

simpson_e

Calculate Simpson's evenness index.

Dominance metrics#

Dominance [5] (or concentration) measures the degree that one or a few most abundant species (taxa) represent the great majority of a community. It can be considered as a measure of community unevenness.

It should be noted that higher dominance corresponds to lower biodiversity.

berger_parker_d

Calculate Berger-Parker dominance index.

dominance

Calculate Simpson's dominance index.

gini_index

Calculate the Gini index.

mcintosh_d

Calculate McIntosh dominance index.

simpson_d

Calculate Simpson's dominance index, a.k.a.

strong

Calculate Strong's dominance index.

Coverage metrics#

Coverage [6] measures the proportion of individuals of a community that have been observed (or unobserved) in a sample. It describes the completeness of sampling.

esty_ci

Calculate Esty's confidence interval of Good's coverage estimator.

goods_coverage

Calculate Good's coverage estimator.

lladser_ci

Calculate single CI of the conditional uncovered probability.

lladser_pe

Calculate single point estimate of conditional uncovered probability.

robbins

Calculate Robbins' estimator for probability of unobserved outcomes.

References#