Do Not Divide Count Data with Count Data; A Story from Pollination Ecology with Implications Beyond.

ABSTRACT: Studies in ecology are often describing observed variations in a certain ecological phenomenon by use of environmental explanatory variables. A common problem is that the numerical nature of the ecological phenomenon does not always fit the assumptions underlying traditional statistical tests. A text book example comes from pollination ecology where flower visits are normally reported as frequencies; number of visits per flower per unit time. Using visitation frequencies in statistical analyses comes with two major caveats: the lack of knowledge on its error distribution and that it does not include all information found in the data; 10 flower visits in 20 flowers is treated the same as recording 100 visits in 200 flowers. We simulated datasets with various "flower visitation distributions

SUBMITTER: Reitan T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4752487 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature