Diversity and interdisciplinarity: how can one distinguish and recombine disparity, variety, and balance?

The dilemma which remained unsolved using Rao-Stirling diversity, namely of how variety and balance can be combined into "dual concept diversity" (Stirling in SPRU electronic working paper series no. 28. http://www.sussex.ac.uk/Units/spru/publications/imprint/sewps/sewp28/sewp28.pdf, 1998, p. 48f.) can be clarified by using Nijssen et al.'s (Coenoses 13(1):33-38 1998) argument that the Gini coefficient is a perfect indicator of balance. However, the Gini coefficient is not an indicator of variety; this latter term can be operationalized independently as relative variety. The three components of diversity-variety, balance, and disparity-can thus be clearly distinguished and independently operationalized as measures varying between zero and one. The new diversity indicator ranges with more resolving power in the empirical case.