Collaborative Research: Estimating Biological Diversity and Its Patterns

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Quantifying the immense diversity of microbial life poses significant new challenges. Statistical methods currently available to estimate microbial diversity are, at best, unproven, because they are not compatible with the highly skewed species abundance curves that are characteristic of most microbial communities. The objectives of this research are to 1) develop novel statistical approaches to estimate biodiversity, 2) test these methods using existing data sets, and 3) make these methods available to the community in the form of freely accessible, easy to use, sophisticated statistical software. The software tools will implement a wide variety of older and novel methods for estimating species richness, including parametric and nonparametric procedures and interactive graphical displays. These tools will be tested by applying them to existing data sets, and they will be used to analyze emerging global patterns of microbial biodiversity. The intellectual merit of the project is that these tools have the potential to transform microbial biodiversity research by providing reliable biodiversity metrics with meaningful standard errors. The broader impacts of the project include student training and the creation of tools that will serve a growing cadre of biostatisticians, bioinformaticians, and microbial ecologists.