Science

Species diversity.

Definition

Species diversity measures the variety and abundance of different species within a community or ecosystem. It includes both species richness (the number of different species) and species evenness (how evenly individuals are distributed among those species).

Examples

Real-world.

  • 1 A tropical rainforest with thousands of species having high species diversity
  • 2 A monoculture cornfield with essentially one species having very low diversity
  • 3 Coral reefs being called the 'rainforests of the sea' due to their incredible species diversity