Robust estimation of parasite component community richness

The performance of 2 nonparametric estimators of species richness, the boot strap (S-B) and kth-order jackknife (S-Jk), are compared using simulated pa rasite communities. The parameters of the simulation match those of an earl ier comparison that favored S-B as an estimator but did not include S-Jk. S -Jk is the least biased of the 2 estimators. Whereas the bias of S-B is sig nificantly affected by true species richness and the proportion of rare spe cies, the bias of S-Jk is relatively insensitive to changes in these parame ters, and is, therefore, recommended as a robust estimator of species richn ess.