Statistical Methods for Estimating Species Abundance

Abstract

As mentioned in the last chapter, species abundance and its probability distribution patterns were very basic and important units in ecological studies. Thus, for ecological studies, it is very natural and common to collect species abundance data. However, limited sampling of species abundance could not accurately reflect the abundance and density patterns of species in the sampling areas. Thus, it is necessary to utilize statistical methods to infer the abundance of specie with different experimental designs. In this chapter, I outlined the relevant statistical methods for estimating species abundance when using different sampling strategies.

Keywords: Adaptive sampling, biodiversity analyses, biodiversity survey and inventory, ecological sampling, greedy algorithm, random sampling, sampling strategies, species richness and abundance, statistical inference, statistical uncertainty, statistical variance.