Question

The Simpson’s Index is typically used as an ecological tool to describe the diversity of species in a particular area. Why isn’t it fair to use the Simpson’s index we calculated using fossils as an accurate measure of the diversity of living organisms in that location during the Devonian?

Answer 1

Simpson's Diversity Index is a measure of diversity. In ecology, it is often used to quantify the biodiversity of a habitat. I....it is a measure of diversity which takes into account the number of species present, as well as the relative abundance of each species. As species richness and evenness increase, so diversity increases. n = the total number of organisms of a particular species...When the Devonian period dawned about 416 million years ago the planet was changing its appearance....in the study of diversity of living organisms comparison between two things can not be possible because one has been studied in a greater details with larger list of species .The smaller  sample may be nearly a subset of the larger sample....One would want a high similarity index in this case ...In an attempt to remedy the failings of cluster analysis factor analysis was attempted .In this method the differences among samples are explained by a number of independent factors each of which consecutively explains less of the variance..it was hoped that these factors might correspond to the convoluted provincial facies and temporal differences allowing deconvolution. Simpsons frequency data index expression was used in an attempt to minimize some of the problem occurrence and mis identification ..the results were disappointing and deconvolution of the provincial,facies and temporal differences was not possible