Hillnumberramverket

Hillnumberramverket is a conceptual framework for applying Hill numbers to quantify and compare biodiversity across ecosystems and scales. It offers a structured workflow for selecting the order parameter q, computing diversity metrics, and interpreting results in ecological and microbiome contexts. The framework emphasizes comparability, scalability, and transparency in reporting diversity estimates.

The core idea is to express diversity as Hill numbers D_q, where q determines sensitivity to rare versus common species. Lower q values give more weight to rare taxa, higher q values emphasize common taxa. The framework explicitly supports analysis at multiple levels of aggregation—alpha diversity within sites, beta diversity among sites, and gamma diversity for the overall region—and provides methods for partitioning diversity into these components.

Data handling within the Hillnumberramverket includes steps for addressing sampling effort, such as rarefaction and extrapolation, to enable fair comparisons. Users can compare D_q across studies by standardizing sample sizes or by using rarefied estimates. The framework also links D_q to familiar indices: D_0 corresponds to species richness, D_1 to the exponential of Shannon entropy, and D_2 to the inverse of Simpson’s index.

Adoption and evaluation of Hillnumberramverket vary by discipline. In ecology and microbiome research, it is valued for its unifying mathematical basis and its intuitive interpretation. Criticisms focus on sensitivity to sampling completeness, the choice of q, and the ecological meaning of comparisons across very different communities.

Implementation is supported by statistical software such as the iNEXT and vegan packages in R, which provide functions to compute Hill numbers, perform rarefaction, and generate diversity profiles. The framework is often described in reviews and methodological papers on diversity measurement and is used to standardize reporting in biodiversity assessments.