Which value of Simpson’s D indicates maximum diversity?
Under the commonly used dominance definition, Simpson’s D is calculated as Σpᵢ², where pᵢ is the proportional abundance of species i. It estimates the probability that two individuals drawn at random from a community belong to the same species. D approaches 1 when one species dominates, because nearly every pair is conspecific. It approaches 0 as richness increases and abundances become more evenly distributed, because a random pair is increasingly likely to contain different species. Among the listed values, 0 therefore represents the theoretical direction of maximum diversity. For a finite c
Ref: NCERT Biology Class 12, Ch. 15 Biodiversity and Conservation