Comparison of diversity indices applied to macrophyte incidence-based data

In this work, a recently proposed diversity index based on Patil and Taillie parametric diversity measure (or Tsallis entropy), Sq*, was applied to samples (presence-absence data) of macrophytes from the Itaipu Reservoir, Brazil. This new index was the value of the family of indices Sq for a specific evenness of a sample. Results demonstrated that the Shannon index and species richness showed expressively high correlation with the Sq*; however, the evenness had low correlation coefficients with the index Sq*, indicating that Sq* was particularly sensitive to rarity and species richness. On the other hand, the weak correlations of this index with evenness demonstrated that it was less sensitive to species relative abundances.