Question

Explain the difference between species richness and species evenness.

Answer 1

Species evenness refers to how close in numbers each species in an environment is
(So if there are 40 foxes, and 1000 dogs, the community is not very even.)


Species richness is the number of different species represented in an ecological community, landscape or region. Species richness is simply a count of species, and it does not take into account the abundances of the species or their relative abundance distributions.

Answer 2

Species richness measures the number of different species while species evenness tells whether the ecosystem has a dominant species or has similar abundances of all species. Both measures is needed to evaluate the biodiversity of an ecosystem. Biodiversity is defined and measured as an attribute that has two components — richness and evenness. Richness = The number of groups of genetically or functionally related individuals. ... Evenness = Proportions of species or functional groups present on a site. Abstract. Evidence about the health of ecosystems is often thought to be related to biodiversity. Traditional attempts to define biodiversity consider two components: richness—the number of species in the ecosystem—and evenness—the extent to which species are evenly distributed. More information was provided from me in this answer. Hope this helps!