This accessible and timely book provides a comprehensive overview of how to measure biodiversity. The book highlights new developments, including innovative approaches to measuring taxonomic distinctness and estimating species richness, and evaluates these alongside traditional methods such as species abundance distributions, and diversity and evenness statistics.
A great overview of the concepts, tools and problems of such an enterprise. I found the 'solved problems' section really helpful to give some reality to the discussions.
Magurran does a nice job of summarizing the concepts and the methods for measuring diversity. She notes strengths and weaknesses of the techniques and sampling issues as well. Good references to explore the concerns, discussion, and techniques in detail are included throughout the chapters. I found this book very helpful for constructing research projects, as a guide in interpretation and discussion of results, and for accessing important literature. I highly recommend this book as an introduction and reference guide for students concerned with biodiversity.
I am the type of person who does not like to read a typical textbook. But this book is different. Maybe because it is well written and well summarised. And this book helped me with my assignment!