Molecular biology has lead to many new advances and changed many older relationships. A. Species diversity is a characteristic unique to the community level, i.e., a group of organism living together in a particular environment. High species diversity occurs when a community has many equally or nearly equally abundant species. For example, if we had a community of 100 individuals in 10 species we would have maximum diversity of that environment. Conversely, if we had 100 individuals, but 91 belonged to the same species and the other species had one individual each we would have low diversity.
High diversity indicates a complex community with many interactions.
Some ecologists see this as a measure of community stability while others believe there is not a simple relationship. Others regard highly diverse communities as more mature, again others question this concept. B. One way to measure diversity. There are many others. All attempt to provide a quantitative method for studying or documenting diversity.