Biosocial and bionumerical diversity of variously sized home gardens in Tabasco, Mexico

The evaluation of species and structural diversity of home gardens strongly depends on the methods used. We distinguish the biosocial and the bionumerical method. The first is widely used and takes data of the whole population of trees of home gardens to calculate diversity. The bionumerical method calculates diversity from data of a fixed number of randomly selected trees. We apply both methods to analyze if structural and species diversity varies with home garden size, a theme of considerable conservation interest, and compare results. We inventoried the tree component of a sample of 61 home gardens from rural areas in Tabasco, Mexico, which we assigned to three size categories: small (a parts per thousand currency sign1,000 m(2)), medium sized (> 1,000 and a parts per thousand currency sign2,000 m(2)), and large home gardens (> 2,000 m(2)). Average species richness and Shannon diversity indices determined by the biosocial method were significantly different among home garden size classes. Average species richness determined by the bionumerical method did not differ among size classes. Both methods showed highest total observed and estimated species richness in the large home gardens, which contain many unique species. Both methods showed similar overall species composition among size classes and highest structural diversity in large home gardens. We conclude that it is important for conservation to maintain large home gardens in local mosaics, and that the biosocial and bionumerical methods are complementary. The bionumerical method allows straight comparison of population diversity within and among systems, but lacks attention for rare and unique species. The biosocial method evaluates how much diversity families custody.