Diversity

{
  "id": "MLC-T-ENV-008314",
  "term": "Diversity",
  "field": "Environment",
  "definition": "1. Physical or biological complexity in a system. Usually a measure of the number of different species in an ecosystem.\n\n2. An ecological measure of the variety of organisms present in a habitat.\n\n3. Differences among and within species.\n\n4. Typically used in relation to species, a single index that incorporates the number of species and relative abundances of species (evenness). For example, a collection is said to have high diversity if it has many species and their abundances are relatively even. There are many types of diversity (Pielou 1977:292; Wiens 1989a:123):\n\n5. Biological diversity can refer to the number of species in an area, the number of types of species (e.g. microbial functional groups, or plant structural types), the degree of genetic variability within a species, or the distribution of species within an area.\n\n6. Ecological measure of the variety of organisms present in a habitat.\n\n7. A combination of the number of taxa (see taxa richness) and the relative abundance of those taxa. A variety of diversity indexes have been developed to calculate diversity.",
  "subject": "Water",
  "references": [
    "Nearshore Terrestrial Ecosystems Glossary",
    "Chesapeake Bay Glossary",
    "Superfund for Students and Teachers Glossary",
    "USGS Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center Glossary of Avian Terms For Use in Avian Conservation Biology",
    "USDA Natural Resources Conservation Services Soil Ecology Terms Glossary",
    "Glossary of Wetland Bioassessment Terms"
  ],
  "url": "https://mlchart.com/terminology/environment/diversity/"
}