Open AccessContrasting Diversity Values: Statistical Inferences Based on Overlapping Confidence Intervals
Author(s) -
Ian MacGregor-Fors,
Mark E. Payton
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
plos one
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.99
H-Index - 332
ISSN - 1932-6203
DOI - 10.1371/journal.pone.0056794
Subject(s) - confidence interval , statistics , species richness , robust confidence intervals , confidence distribution , credible interval , cdf based nonparametric confidence interval , confidence and prediction bands , tolerance interval , diversity (politics) , mathematics , ecology , biology , sociology , anthropology
Ecologists often contrast diversity (species richness and abundances) using tests for comparing means or indices. However, many popular software applications do not support performing standard inferential statistics for estimates of species richness and/or density. In this study we simulated the behavior of asymmetric log-normal confidence intervals and determined an interval level that mimics statistical tests with P(α) = 0.05 when confidence intervals from two distributions do not overlap. Our results show that 84% confidence intervals robustly mimic 0.05 statistical tests for asymmetric confidence intervals, as has been demonstrated for symmetric ones in the past. Finally, we provide detailed user-guides for calculating 84% confidence intervals in two of the most robust and highly-used freeware related to diversity measurements for wildlife (i.e., EstimateS , Distance ).