Accounting

Sociology

Mathematics

Biology

Statistics

Filter (signal processing)

Rarefaction (ecology)

Sampling (signal processing)

Econometrics

Economics

Alpha diversity

Ecology

Anthropology

Variance (accounting)

Diversity (politics)

Computer science

Computer vision

Species diversity

Frontiers in Microbiology

Understanding the drivers of diversity is a fundamental question in ecology. Extensive literature discusses different methods for describing diversity and documenting its effects on ecosystem health and function. However, it is widely believed that diversity depends on the intensity of sampling. I discuss a statistical perspective on diversity, framing the diversity of an environment as an unknown parameter, and discussing the bias and variance of plug-in and rarefied estimates. I describe the state of the statistical literature for addressing these problems, focusing on the analysis of microbial diversity. I argue that latent variable models can address issues with variance, but bias corrections need to be utilized as well. I encourage ecologists to use estimates of diversity that account for unobserved species, and to use measurement error models to compare diversity across ecosystems.

Rarefaction, Alpha Diversity, and Statistics