Estimating Bias in α- and β-Diversity from Reduced Taxonomic Resolution

This web application estimates the expected error in α- and β-diversity when taxa are grouped into coarser categories because of identification limits.
It has been developed for the acoustic monitoring of bats, where species are often grouped into sonotypes instead of being identified at the species level.
The results are based on simulation experiments showing that biodiversity is systematically underestimated when multiple species are collapsed into fewer sonotypes.
The magnitude of this bias depends primarily on taxonomic resolution, i.e. the ratio between the number of species and the number of sonotypes.