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Effects of sample size (replicate number) on similarity measures in river benthic Aufwuchs community analysis
Author(s) -
Cao Yang,
Williams W. Peter,
Bark Anthony W.
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
water environment research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.356
H-Index - 73
eISSN - 1554-7531
pISSN - 1061-4303
DOI - 10.2175/106143097x125236
Subject(s) - replicate , sample size determination , similarity (geometry) , resampling , statistics , sample (material) , metric (unit) , benthic zone , relative species abundance , mathematics , abundance (ecology) , biology , ecology , chemistry , computer science , chromatography , artificial intelligence , operations management , economics , image (mathematics)
The effects of sample size (the number of replicates) on 11 similarity measures were investigated using a set of freshwater macroinvertebrate samples and a randomization procedure for resampling. Most of these indices were strongly affected by sample size. However, as sample size increased, species composition and relative abundance changed significantly and the real similarity between two replicate samples increased substantially. Responsiveness to sample size dictates the sensitivity of a similarity measure to community change. The relative independence of sample size of some similarity measures results from strongly overweighting abundant species. CY dissimilarity‐similarity measure showed the highest sensitivity, followed by Canberra metric.