FN Archimer Export Format PT J TI A phytosociological method for interpreting plankton data BT AF FROMENTIN, Jean-Marc IBANEZ, F. legendre, P. AS 1:1;2:1;3:2; FF 1:;2:;3:; C1 Observatoire Oceanologique, Station Zoologique, BP 28, F-06230 Villefranche-sur-Mer, France Departement de sciences biologiques, Universite de Montreal. CP 6128. Succursale A, Montreal (Quebec), Canada C2 OBSERV OCEANOL VILLEFRANCHE, FRANCE UNIV MONTREAL, CANADA IF 1.928 TC 0 UR https://archimer.ifremer.fr/doc/00033/14454/11756.pdf LA English DT Article AB Multivariate techniques allow data sets to be summarised, but are not deslgned to causally model ecological phenomena. The ambiguity of the interpretation results from the ambiguity of the scaling space. The phytosociological method proposed by Grandjouan (1982; These d'etat, Universite Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg) is a general interpretive framework allowing separate consideration of 3 distinct reference spaces. a geographical space to visualise the spatio-temporal distribution of the descriptors, an ecological space showing the effects of the environmental variables on the biological descriptors, and a bio-ethological space showing the statistically meaningful species cornmunities. It is thus possible to define the position of each biological category and each observation along the scale of variation of each environmental variable (hydrological position, HP) or each geographic coordinate (geographical posltlon. GP), as well as its density relatlve to these scales (indicative value, IV). Using continuous zooplankton data collected along a transect across the Llgunan Sea front, pnncipal component analysis and correspondence analysis were compared to this technique. The phytosociological method produced the most meaningful ecological results about the structure of thls frontal ecosystem. PY 1993 PD MAR SO Marine Ecology Progress Series SN 0171-8630 PU Inter-Research VL 93 BP 285 EP 306 ID 14454 ER EF