The devil is in the detail: estimating species richness density and relative abundance of tropical island herpetofauna

摘要

BackgroundOne of the basic premises of drawing samples from populations is that the samples are representative of the populations. However, error in sampling is poorly recognized, and it goes unnoticed especially in community ecology. By combining traditional open quadrats used for sampling forest floor herpetofauna with intensive bounded quadrats, we explore the effect of sampling error on estimates of species richness, diversity, and density in the Andaman Islands.