Table 2.

Community diversity indices used in the present study, ordered by increasing evenness, where S is the number of taxa i per sample, N is the total number of individuals observed per sample, and P_i is the relative abundance of each taxon i.

Index Name	Formula	Range of Values	Properties
Menhinick	$R=\frac{S}{\sqrt{N}}$	R > 0	Richness controlling for the effect of observation size (rarefied richness)
Gini-Simpson	$D=1-{\displaystyle {\displaystyle \sum }_{i=1}^S}{P}_i^2$	0 ≤ D < 1	Diversity highlighting abundant taxa
Shannon	$H^{\prime }=-{\displaystyle {\displaystyle \sum }_{i=1}^S}{P}_{i}ln\left(P_i\right)$	0 < H′ ≤ ln(S)	Diversity highlighting low-abundance taxa
Pielou’s evenness	$E=\raisebox{1ex}{$H^{\prime }$}\!\left/ \!\raisebox{-1ex}{${H^{\prime }}_{max}$}\right.$	0 < E ≤ 1	Determines the equality of the community in individuals’ number per taxon, where H′max = ln(S)