Range of diversity curves

PRIMER plots a range of what might be termed diversity curves, under the Plots>Geometric Class Plot and Dominance Plot menus, obtained when the active window is a data matrix, and these are described in Chapter 8 of CiMC. They display a combination of evenness and richness components of diversity in a more continuous way than is achieved by a single index and, in the case of ABC (Abundance-Biomass Comparison) curves, incorporate both abundance and biomass components of the assemblage in a single plot. The multiple ABC plots (one for each sample, matched over the abundance and biomass arrays) are now held in a v7 multi-plot. Factor levels can be identified on the plots by symbols/line types and a structure for testing dominance plot differences over sites/ times/treatments etc., facilitated by Analyse>DOMDIS, generates a triangular matrix of between-curve distances which can be input to ANOSIM (Section 9). Richness (S) estimators are provided in Analyse>Species-Accum Plot, which (as elsewhere) supplements the plot by sending statistics to a new worksheet, making it easy to export information from PRIMER to other software. (There are effectively no changes of functionality for the routines in this section, by comparison with v6).