[Taxacom] How frequent should you collect for a good representation of insect fauna?

[Bob Mesibov]

The problem of sampling with a long tail of rare species has been dealt
with both in theoretical and empirical studies. For example

Buzas et al. 1982. On the distribution of species occurence.
Paleobiology 8: 143-150

show that the Fisher log series throws up false absences with a high
frequency. Buzas in 1987 showed that repeated sampling of the same data
set gave a 'unique species' proportion of about 25%.

In a rather more frightening study

Azarbayjani, FF and Richardson, BJ. 1999. Monitoring for changes in
arboreal arthropod diversity in woodlands: how many replicates are
needed? Trans Roy Soc New South Wales 1999: 40-45

used an insecticide spray to recover canopy arthropods of small trees
and looked at Chao and alpha diversity estimators. 20 replicates were
needed to detect a 23% change in number of species per tree.
-- 
Dr Robert Mesibov
Honorary Research Associate, Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery
and School of Zoology, University of Tasmania
Contact: PO Box 101, Penguin, Tasmania, Australia 7316
(03) 64371195; 61 3 64371195

Australian millipedes checklist
http://www.qvmag.tas.gov.au/zoology/millipedes/index.html
Tasmanian multipedes
http://www.qvmag.tas.gov.au/zoology/multipedes/mulintro.html
Spatial data basics for Tasmania
http://www.utas.edu.au/spatial/locations/index.html
Biodiversity salvage blog
http://biodiversitysalvage.blogspot.com
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