Trophic Diversity Measurement in Sympatric Predatory Species

Abstract

It is suggested that Pielou's method (1966a) of estimating the diversity of a plant community from a series of randomly placed quadrats, can be applied to measuring dietary diversity of predatory populations. Treating each stomach as a sampling unit, an equivalent of a quadrat, it is possible to calculate for the whole predatory population the trophic diversity and the average of the trophic diversity with its standard error, and obtain a satisfactory representation of the prey species. The method proposed here may serve to produce important descriptive parameters in comparative ecological studies among sympatric species.