L'Etude des Communautes Vegetales par l'Analyse Statistique des Liaisons Entre les Especes et les Variables Ecologiques: Un Exemple

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Abstract
The basic principles of the study of plant communities by the analysis of correlations between species and ecological variables have been explained in a recent issue of Biometrics. This second paper illustrates these principles with a concrete example. It consists in the analysis of a set of 43 samples of vegetation taken in Belgium in Calluna vulgaris heaths. The author successively considers the 46 x 46 between-species correlation matrix, the 7 x 7 between ecological variables correlation matrix, and the 7 x 46 between-species and ecological variables correlation matrix, applying factor analysis and canonical correlation analysis. According to the results of this analysis, the 43 samples are divided into two groups and the same statistical treatment is applied to the most numerous sub-group.