Abstract: The notion of biodiversity connotes in common usage phenotype richness produced by the process of evolution. We believe it is useful for specific purposes to think of biodiversity in broader terms, having in point of fact the implication of structural complexities for which evolution and environmental sorting of the phenotypes are jointly responsible. We consider these on the regional and site levels where climate types and climax types are the primary sorting agents. In order to quantify the components contributed by evolution and by the sorting types, we suggest hierarchical entropy partitions. We use data from the upland and montane vegetations of Heilongjiang province in northeast China to illustrate the method. The results are intriguing. For example. the entropy components attributed to climate type sorting and climax type sorting are dwarfed by the level of entropy in phenotype richness. While this is expected, the relative contributions in relation to their respective maximum values are surprising. The entropy component contributed by climate type sorting is low; the component contributed by climax type sorting is high. The latter indicates a highly even utilization of the climax type niches, while the latter points to insufficient richness to allow a more even utilization of the climate niches in the region.

Key words: Biodiversity, Entropy partition, Climate type, Climax type