Explain how species richness and species evenness differ

Species Richness is the number of different species in an area, while Species Evenness is the size of each population of a particular species in an area.

Explanation:

1. Richness

The number of species per sample is a measure of richness. The more species present in a sample, the 'richer' the sample.

Species richness as a measure on its own takes no account of the number of individuals of each species present. It gives as much weight to those species which have very few individuals as to those which have many individuals. Thus, one daisy has as much influence on the richness of an area as 1000 buttercups.

2. Evenness

Evenness is a measure of the relative abundance of the different species making up the richness of an area.

To give an example, we might have sampled two different fields for wildflowers. The sample from the first field consists of 300 daisies, 335 dandelions and 365 buttercups. The sample from the  second field comprises 20 daisies, 49 dandelions and 931 buttercups (see the table below). Both samples have the same richness (3 species) and the same total number of individuals (1000). However, the first sample has more evenness than the second. This is because the total number of individuals in the sample is quite evenly distributed between the three species. In the second sample, most of the individuals are buttercups, with only a few daisies and dandelions present. Sample 2 is therefore considered to be less diverse than sample 1.

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