Methods for selecting dominant species in ecological series: application to marine macrobenthic communities from the English Channel
Mante, C.; Dauvin, J.-C.; Elkaim, B. (2001). Methods for selecting dominant species in ecological series: application to marine macrobenthic communities from the English Channel. J. Rech. Océanogr. 26(1-2): 29-36
In: Journal de Recherche Océanographique. Union des Océanographes de France: Paris. ISSN 0397-5347, more
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| Keywords |
Data processing > Data reduction
Taxa > Species > Rare species
ANE, France, Brittany, Morlaix Bay [Marine Regions]
Marine/Coastal |
| Authors | | Top |
- Mante, C.
- Dauvin, J.-C., more
- Elkaim, B.
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| Abstract |
Three methods are proposed for the determination of rare species in ecological series. While the usual techniques for excluding species are generally based on the examination of proportions, from our point of view a species is rare when its sampling is improbable. Our methods stem from this objective definition, which can be interpreted locally, i.c. at the level of each sample, or globally, i.c. at the level of a whole dataset. The local method determines rare species in each individual survey and involves the computation of a smoothed presence/absence coding. We propose two global methods based on results concrning the asymptotic distribution of this coding. In this setting, a species is globally rare if the distribution of its coding is statistically close enough to the theoretical distribution of the coding for rare species. Dominant species (in the sense of "not rare") can thus be selected, either locally or globally. These methods were applied to two marine communities from the English Channel. The local method enabled the selection of about 40% (respectively 60%) of the species sampled on the most (resp. the less) diverse site. Global selections were much more drastic: about 4.5% of the species were selected from the site richest in species, and approximately 8% from the other one. |
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