Question

I want to analyze how the proportions of groups of species in a biological community correlated to habitat variables. I have 6 functional groups, defined by their similar traits, and I want to know how their proportions vary dependent upon changes in habitat size, and time since the changes started to occur (e.g. ramp disturbances). I basically want to be able to say, Group A species contributed more to the community makeup / function as habitat decreased. Group B species decreased in proportion, but not nearly as fast as Group C, which were extirpated by the time only 20% of the habitat remained with some kind of stats to back it up. I also monitored the communities as they recovered from the distrubance, and would similarly like to make inferences about which groups were contributing more early on vs. late stages recovery (e.g. could species with D-group traits be better at reestablishing?) I don't think using raw abundance is appropriate because (generally) all groups decrease in abundance as habitat decreases, but some groups actually dramatically increase in proportion of the community, and thus would contribute more to the ecosystem services etc. etc. Does anyone know how I should analyze this data? I have thought about using Spearman correlations to answer broadly if the groups do correlate with habitat changes, but this cant really tell me if one group is increasing or decreasing at a faster rate.

Answer 1

To analyze how proportions of species in a community correlate with habitat variables, use multivariate approaches like PCA or NMDS. Then, use statistical tests like PERMANOVA or ANOSIM to assess group differences.

Step-by-step explanation:

To analyze how the proportions of groups of species in a biological community correlate with habitat variables, you can use multivariate approaches such as ordination methods, like Principal Component Analysis (PCA) or Non-Metric Multidimensional Scaling (NMDS). These techniques can help visualize patterns and summarize the principal gradients within and among communities. Additionally, you can use statistical tests such as PERMANOVA or ANOSIM to assess the significance of group differences in relation to habitat changes.