Use of approximate inference in an index of completeness of biological inventories

Abstract

To assess the completeness of a floristic or faunal inventory, one may use the ratio of the observed number of species to the "true number" of species (C). If the inventory is complete, C =1. The estimate of the true number can be obtained from accumulation curves, nonparametric methods, or other techniques. We devised a simple method for computing confidence intervals (CI) for C and for evaluating the null hypothesis that the inventory is complete. The method is based on the assumptions that an estimate of the variance of the true number of species is known and that the distribution of the estimator of the true number of species is approximately normal. We applied our method to bird inventories in the Balsas Basin of Mexico. The completeness index for subtransects were lower (84.0, 85.4, and 89.9%) than for the whole transect (91.6%) (all significantly different from 100%). Thus, these particular inventories were incomplete at 2 spatial resolutions. Our method of estimating CI for C can be used to estimate species richness obtained from databases of different sites or to test the null hypothesis that an inventory derived from a database is complete.