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Traditional multivariate techniques: Potential for use in ecotoxicology
Author(s) -
Sparks Tim H.,
Scott W. Andy,
Clarke Ralph T.
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
environmental toxicology and chemistry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.1
H-Index - 171
eISSN - 1552-8618
pISSN - 0730-7268
DOI - 10.1002/etc.5620180206
Subject(s) - ecotoxicology , multivariate statistics , ordination , multivariate analysis , multivariate analysis of variance , variance (accounting) , regression analysis , popularity , cluster analysis , statistics , ecology , biology , mathematics , psychology , accounting , business , social psychology
This paper summarizes established multivariate techniques and illustrates examples of their use with ecotoxicological data. Multivariate analysis can be broken down into three main areas of application: ordination, clustering/discrimination, and investigating relationships between sets of variables. Many of these techniques are well established, having been developed in the first half of this century. Although some multivariate techniques predate the very familiar analysis of variance (ANOVA), the popularity of multivariate analysis in ecotoxicology is currently overshadowed by ANOVA and regression techniques. We suggest that this will become increasingly less the case and that we can expect to see much greater use of multivariate techniques in ecotoxicology in the future.