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Five Practical Uses Of Spatial Autocorrelation For Studies Of Coral Reef Ecology, S Hamylton

Faculty of Science, Medicine and Health - Papers: part A

The organisation of benthic communities across coral reefs is underpinned by spatially structured ecological processes and neighbourhood interactions such as larval dispersal, migration, competition and the spread of disease. These give rise to spatial autocorrelation in reef communities. This paper demonstrates how the measurement of spatial autocorrelation can profitably be incorporated into studies of coral reef ecology through a series of 5 simple statistical exercises: for the generation of maps depicting the strength of spatial relationships between ecological communities, as an indicator of optimal dimensions for sampling ecological communities on coral reefs, as a diagnostic tool for model misspecification, as …