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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2009 Jul 1.
Published in final edited form as: FEMS Microbiol Rev. 2008 Apr 22;32(4):557–578. doi: 10.1111/j.1574-6976.2008.00111.x

Table 1.

Categories of diversity measurements.

Measurement of diversity within a single community (α diversity) Measurement of diversity shared among communities (β diversity)
Only presence/absence of taxa considered Qualitative α diversity (Richness)
Species-based:
 Chao 1
 ACE
 Rarefaction
Divergence-based:
 Phylogenetic Diversity (PD)		 Qualitative β diversity
Species-based:
 Sörensen index
 Jaccard index
Divergence-based:
 Unweighted UniFrac
 Taxonomic Similarity (ΔS)
Additionally accounts for the number of times that each taxon was observed Quantitative α diversity (Richness and/or Evenness)
Species-based:
 Shannon’s index
 Simpson’s index
Divergence-based:
 Theta		 Quantitative β diversity
Species-based:
 Sörensen quantitative index
 Morisita-Horn measure
Divergence-based:
 Weighted UniFrac
 FST
 DPCoA