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ARS Home » Northeast Area » University Park, Pennsylvania » Pasture Systems & Watershed Management Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #193107
Title: DISSIMILARITY-BASED FUNCTIONS FOR ECOLOGICAL ANALYSIS

Author
item Goslee, Sarah
item URBAN, DEAN - DUKE UNIVERSITY

Submitted to: Internet Web Page
Publication Type: Other
Publication Acceptance Date: 4/10/2006
Publication Date: 4/10/2006
Citation: Goslee, S.C., Urban, D. 2006. Dissimilarity-based functions for ecological analysis. Ecodist. Availability http://cran.fhcrc.org/src/contrib/Descriptions/ecodist.html

Interpretive Summary: An interpretive summary is not required.

Technical Abstract: The package ecodistR is an add-on developed for R statistical software (R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria). It implements statistical analysis methods developed by the authors and others for use with ecological data. The main focus is on multivariate, spatial and dissimilarity-based analyses. The package contains functions for manipulating common ecological community data formats and for calculating a variety of dissimilarity metrics from these data. The ordination methods Principal Components Analysis and Non-metric Multidimensional Scaling are also included. Most importantly, this package provides facilities to perform simple and partial Mantel tests, including partials on multiple variables, and to calculate and plot Mantel and multivariate correlograms, methods which are not widely available. EcodistR is currently the only available way to apply some of these methods while also benefiting from the capabilities and flexibility of using a powerful statistical software program.