A method of linking multivariate community structure to environmental variables

The method of choice for multivariate representation of community structure is often non-metric multi-dimensional scaling (MDS). This has great flexibility in accommodating biologically relevant (i.e. non correlation-based) definitions of similarity in species composition of 2 samples, and in preser...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Marine ecology. Progress series (Halstenbek) 1993, Vol.92 (3), p.205-219
Main Authors: Clarke, K. R., Ainsworth, M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aquatic communities
Biota
Brackish
Community structure
Diatoms
Marine
Nematoda
Nitrogen
Ordination
Salinity
Sediments
Species
Water depth
Citations: Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The method of choice for multivariate representation of community structure is often non-metric multi-dimensional scaling (MDS). This has great flexibility in accommodating biologically relevant (i.e. non correlation-based) definitions of similarity in species composition of 2 samples, and in preserving the rank-order relations amongst those similarities in the placing of samples in an ordination. Correlation-based techniques (such as Canonical Correlation) are then inappropriate in linking the observed biotic structure to measured environmental variables; a more natural approach is simply to compare separate sample ordinations from biotic and abiotic variables and choose that subset of environmental variables which provides a good match between the 2 configurations. In fact, the fundamental constructs here are not the ordination plots but the (rank) similarity matrices which underlie them: a suitable measure of agreement between 2 such matrices is therefore proposed and used to define an optimal subset of environmental variables which best explains' the biotic structure. This simple technique is illustrated with 3 data sets, from studies of macrobenthic, meiobenthic and diatom communities in estuarine and coastal waters.
ISSN:0171-8630
1616-1599
DOI:10.3354/meps092205