Species richness
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
Species richness is perhaps the simplest measure of biodiversity. The larger the number, the more species in an area. It is referred to in equations as S. There is a strong inverse correlation in many groups between species richness and latitude - the further from the equator you go, the fewer species you will find, even when compensating for the reduced surface area of the globe in higher latitudes. Other measures of biodiversity may also take into account the rarity of the taxa, and the amount of evolutionary novelty they embody. As a measure of biodiversity, species richness suffers from the lack of a good definition of "species", but it is easy to measure, and is well studied. Species richness has been found to be a good surrogate for other measures of biodiversity that would be harder to measure directly.
