Canonical correlation analysis of marine macrobenthos survey data

Canonical correlation analysis is applied to measurements of environmental variables and species distributions made during a survey of macrobenthos around a sewage-treatment farm drain. The implications of data reduction, necessary to enable the method to proceed, are discussed. The amount of data was reduced by discarding the rarest species, discarding species occurring at fewest stations, and including only those species and environmental variables which correlated highly with the greatest number of other variables. Only the third data-reduction scheme gave ecologically sensible results. Use of station scores on the first two canonical variates (CV1 and CV2) enabled the sampling grid to be divided into a group of nearshore stations, a group of intermediate depth, and a group of deep offshore stations. Loadings of environmental variables on the canonical variates were found to be unstable but correlations between these variables and canonical variates enabled the variates to be interpreted: CV1 as a gradient of depth and associated changes in sediment characteristics, CV2 with depth- and nutrient-related components, and CV3 as patchiness in sediment characteristics different from that normally expected with depth. Use of correlations between species and canonical variates enables definition of two major species groups, one confined to nearshore environments and a second offshore. These groups (and their sub-groups) related well to groups defined previously by hierarchical classification. It is concluded that, with careful attention to the method of data reduction, canonical correlation analysis can be an effective tool in the analysis of marine benthic survey data.