Measuring Biodiversity
How do biologists meaure biodiversity? In our case we are talking about measuring the diversity of bat species in Krau Wildlife Reserve so that we can make comparisons with other forests, or other habitats.
As you know from following the project, we start by catching and counting bats. We can count how many species we have captured, and how many individuals of each each species, but there are lots of ways of organizing this information so that it is easier to understand and share with other scientists, and to make comparisons.
One of our favorite methods is to organize the data and turn it into a picture called a graph. With a single glance we can see if there are patterns, and if we look closely we can learn all sorts of detailed information that we would miss if we were just looking at the numbers.
Lets work through three examples of one of the most useful graphs called a frequency distribution. Before we get onto the cool bat examples, lets start with something a bit more familiar, and look at the frequency of siblings in your class.
So the basic frequency distribution is pretty easy. In the next example we are getting to the important stuff – the bats. In this case we want to compare bats from two different study sites within Krau Wildlife Reserve. Now instead of having one sample (your class) we have two samples from two parts of the forest. So we will need to prepare two frequency distributions and then we can compare them!
In the next example we compare the diversity of bats from two differents forests — Krau Wildlife Reserve (Malaysia) and Bukit Barisan Selatan (Sumatra, Indonesia).
So far we have been counting individuals of different species, but you can use frequency distributions to explore other kinds of data. In this example we look at the ages of one bat species in two different forests.
As you follow the trapping, you will be using frequency distributions to track the diversity of bats at Kuala Lompat, Krau Wildlife Reserve . Its even more fun with real data!
