Analysis of transect data for microhaoitat correlations and faunal patchiness

Abstract

Distributional studies of benthic megafauna using trawls, direct count, still photographic, and video techniques are all spatially dependent, and traditional analyses which assume independence between observations (e.g. correlation, regression) are not appropriate. We describe a statistical procedure which determines if a species distribution is correlated with microhabitat type and, if so, subsequent patch size analysis is partitioned by microhabitat. Both microhabitat correlation and patch size procedures utilize a randomization protocol which allows for tests of statistical significance, while other spatial statistics have only descriptive value. An example using video transect data taken at a 55 m deep Northwest Atlantic outer continental shelf site (40'50' N , 70'55' W) demonstrates the types of ecological questions this analys~s can generate.