title: Commentary: Do we have a consistent terminology for species diversity? The fallacy of true diversity.
abstract: There is no single best index that can be used to answer all questions about species diversity. Entropy-based diversity indices, including Hill's indices, cannot account for geographical and phylogenetic structure. While a single diversity index arises if we impose several constraints-most notably that gamma diversity be completely decomposed into alpha and beta diversity-there are many ecological questions regarding species diversity for which it is counterproductive, requiring decomposability. Non-decomposable components of gamma diversity may quantify important intrinsic ecological properties, such as resilience or nestedness.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology and School of Mathematics and Statistics, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada. Root_Gorelick@carleton.ca
authors.forename: Root
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Gorelick
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D044822:Biodiversity; D009626:Terminology as Topic