Species-Site Compositional Matrix Comparison Methods

Matrix comparison is an important element in community ecology because the distribution of different species over different areas is usually compiled in a form of a species-site matrix. Thus, if we have different species-site matrices (different species groups in the same sites or the same species assemblage in different non-spatially overlapped regions), we may want to know whether the resultant species-site matrices present similarities. In other words, we may want to compare the distributional congruence of the same set of species across different non-spatially overlapped regions or the distributional congruence of different groups of species in the same set of sites for a region. Thus, statistical methods for matrix comparison could help address these ecological questions. In this chapter, I will present the major statistical methods for conducting matrix similarity comparison. I will use the distribution of bird and mammal species in Hainan Island of China as the case study and example to demonstrate some of the matrix comparison methods introduced in the chapter.

Keywords: Avian biology, community ecology, compositional similarity, distributional congruence and incongruence, island biogeography, island ecology, mammalian biology, Mantel statistic, matrix operation and decomposition, multiscale analyses, partial correlation test, Procrustes statistics, spatial distribution and diversity, spatial ecology, species-site matrix.