Analyzing Ecological Data

This book provides a practical introduction to analyzing ecological data using real data sets collected as part of postgraduate ecological studies or research projects. The first part gives a largely non-mathematical introduction to data exploration, univariate methods (including GAM and mixed modeling techniques), multivariate analysis, time series analysis, and spatial statistics. The second part provides 17 case studies, mainly written together with biologists who attended courses given by the authors. The case studies include topics ranging from terrestrial ecology to marine biology and can be used as a template for a reader's own data analysis. The case studies also show how to deal with certain levels of difficulty during the key process of selecting the correct or appropriate statistical technique. Data from all case studies are available from www.highstat.com. Guidance on software is provided in the book.