Hi everyone,
Following up on our conversation from last week about completeness, I spoke with a couple ecologist colleagues about their understanding of the term. Here is a summary of their responses:
Person 1) I think of completeness as a calculated variable. Completeness is valuable if you want to know if you’ve put in enough effort to have observed all the species present. Completeness is sometimes reported in the compiled report of an inventory for some taxonomic groups (our inventories typically survey amphibians and reptiles, birds, fishes, mammals, and plants). These groups usually report every species within their taxonomic scope that they observe, although sometimes the mammals team focuses on large and volant mammals. People may want to use a calculated number to represent completeness, but then we are getting away from providing raw data and getting more into analysis. Ways we could calculate completeness would be species accumulation curves, or # species observed / # species expected.
Person 2) My understanding of completeness in this context is the proportion of all expected species in the sampling area that were observed during sampling. The way we would calculate that is to record the # species observed and divide it by the # of expected species according to a trusted, independent source.
I hope that is helpful. Please let me know if I can clarify anything.
I will be traveling tomorrow so I will not be able to attend our meeting this week. See you all the following week!
Best,
Zach