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I am trying to perform a multivariate analysis using R and as I have a ecololgical dataset of categorical data only, is it possible to use PERMANOVA on this type of dataset?

Thanks

lroca
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1 Answers1

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Based on the adonis{vegan} help page, your predictors variables can be continuous or factors. The response variables (Y) must be a dissimilarity matrix. So then I would say that because you can make a dissimilarity matrix based on categorical data (for example, using the daisy function in {cluster}), it is possible to use categorical data as the response.

I would recommend reading this paper by Anderson and Walsh (2013) on testing the null hypothesis in perMANOVA, ANOSIM and the Mantel test.

smccain
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