Analytical Techniques for Community Ecology

CFR 502 Course Schedule

Please note: This is the current course schedule and overrides all paper copies. Check back for updates!

Classes will be held in FSH 136 twice a week (usually Monday and Wednesday, occasionally Wednesday and Friday) from 9:00 to 10:20 am.

Readings that are not linked to from this site are in the course text (McCune & Grace 2002). For copyright reasons, readings are only accessible to UW-affiliated people and course notes are only accessible to students in this course.

Dates

Subject

Reading (in text or on website)

Assignment

M 1/5

Housekeeping and Introductions (people and software). Course overview. Introduction to R. R reference card.

Get or bring thumb drive!

W 1/7

Data adjustments: transformations, relativizations, etc

Ch. 7-9; Menges et al 1993

Receive Assignment #1

M 1/12

Matrix algebra

Ch. 1, Appendix 1; Gotelli & Ellison 2004 (Appendix)

Select TBD topics

W 1/14

Distance measures

Ch. 6 [add another reading next time]

Assignment #1 due; Receive Assignment #2 [add another Assignment next time]

M 1/19

No School - Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

W 1/21

Group Comparisons I: Mantel tests and ANOSIM

Ch. 23, 27; Parra et al. 2006

Receive Assignment #1 notes; Project: Overview due

F 1/23

Group Comparisons II: MRPP and Permutational MANOVA.

Ch. 24, 28; Anderson 2001

M 1/26

Group Comparisons III: Choice

Walters & Coen 2006

Assignment #2 due; Receive Assignment #3

W 1/28

Ordinations I: Principal Component Analysis (PCA)

Ch. 13-14; Summerville et al 2006

M 2/2

Ordinations Ia: PCA example

Assignment #3 due

W 2/4

Ordinations II: Correspondence Analysis (CA) and Variants (DCA, CCA).  Lecture09 Excel example

Ch. 19-21

M 2/9

Ordinations III: Non-metric Multidimensional Scaling (NMS)

Ch.15-16; Clarke 1993 (p. 117-126)

W 2/11

Ordinations IV: Choice, Visualization, and Interpretation

Ch. 13, 15, 22

Receive Assignment #4
M 2/16

No School - Presidents' Day

W 2/18

Indicator Species Analysis

Ch. 25; McGeoch & Chown 1998 (optional: Dufrene & Legendre 1997)

Project: Analytical methods due

F 2/20

Diversity Measures

Ch. 4; Gotelli & Colwell 2001

Assignment #4 due

M 2/23

Identifying Groups I: Cluster Analysis

Ch. 10-11; McCune et al. 2000

W 2/25

Identifying Groups II: Discriminant Analysis

Ch. 26

M 3/2

Creating Ordinations

W 3/4

Identifying Groups III: Regression Trees

Ch. 29; De'ath & Fabricius 2000

Project: Draft report due

M 3/9

Project questions

W 3/11

Project Presentations in AND 022

W 3/18

Project Presentations in AND 022 (during final exam slot - 8:30 to 10:20 am)

Project: Final report due