Definition
noun,
Pertains to a number of different species represent in a given ecological community.
Supplement
Species richness is generally used as a measure in evaluating the relative conservation principles of habitats where it connects to the individuality of the species wherein topography with several endemic species are said to have elevated conservation value than those areas where species richness are similar. More or less 1.75 million living species have been identified with an estimate of the total species richness of Earth range from 10 million to 50 million.
Species richness has varieties of patterns that can be observed at any levels of research like in biogeography, evolutionary biology and ecology. Geographic patterns indicate higher species richness in tropical regions than in polar region wherein rainforest and coral reefs considered as the most species-rich habitat found in the tropical regions.
The species richness are affected by the heterogeneity of the sample not only on the number of species where individual drawn from different environmental conditions are expected to have higher species richness than those on similar environment.
Escalating the area increases the experiential species richness due to more individual incorporated in the sample and biologically more heterogeneous.
Compare:
- Species evenness
See also:
- Species diversity
- Scaling pattern of occupancy
