title: Comparing species assemblages via species accumulation curves.
abstract: Comparing species assemblages given incidence-based data is of importance in ecological studies, often done by a visual inspection of estimated species accumulation curves or by an ad hoc use of 95% pointwise confidence bands of these curves. It is shown that comparing species assemblages is a challenging problem. A chi(2) test is proposed. An adjustment using an eigenvalue decomposition is proposed to overcome computational difficulties. The bootstrap method is also suggested to approximate the distribution of the proposed test statistic. The eigenvalue adjusted (Eva) chi(2) test and the Eva-bootstrap test are assessed by a simulation study. Both the Eva-chi(2) and the Eva-bootstrap tests are applied to a study that involves two woody seedling species assemblages.
authors.affiliation: Department of Statistics, University of California, Riverside, Riverside, California 92521, USA. cmao@stat.ucr.edu
authors.forename: Chang Xuan
authors.initials: CX
authors.lastname: Mao
authors.forename: Jun
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Li
mesh_terms: D044822:Biodiversity; D001699:Biometry / Q000379:methods*; D004463:Ecology / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D017753:Ecosystem; D015233:Models, Statistical; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D013045:Species Specificity; D014197:Trees