Cellular automata and ecology |
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Authors: | Klaus Rohde |
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Institution: | Earth and Biosphere Institute and School of Geography, Univ. of Leeds, Woodhouse Lane, Leeds, UK (c.j.keylock@leeds.ac.uk). |
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Abstract: | Many indices for measuring species diversity have been proposed. In this article, a link is noted between a common family of diversity indices and non-additive statistical mechanics. This makes the Shannon index and the Simpson diversity (or Gini coefficient) special cases of a more general index. The general index includes a parameter q that can be interpreted from a statistical mechanics perspective for systems with an underlying (multi)fractal structure. A q - generalised version of the Zipf–Mandelbrot distribution sometimes used to characterise rank–abundance relationships may be obtained by maximising this entropy. |
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