Measures of individual uncertainty for ecological models: Variance and entropy

► Variance and entropy are both common measures for an organism's uncertainty inherent in a distribution of possible outcomes. ► These measures are compared in two models of resource variability. ► Variance is a superior measure when the distribution of outcomes is discrete and unimodal. ► Entropy is a superior measure when distributions are multimodal or continuous. ► For multimodal outcome distributions, variance may incorrectly characterize changes in uncertainty.