STATISTICAL APPROACH OF THE SPATIAL AND T EMPORAL VARIABILITY WITHIN THE SPECIES-ENVIRONMENT RELATIONSHIPS

A significant part of ecological research consists in assessing the re lationships between a faunistic array and an environmental away for de scription or prediction. Both arrays incorporate a temporal (between d ates) and a spatial (between sites) variability. The matching of two b etween-date analyses (principal component analysis or correspondence a nalysis) allows the study of the temporal covariation between the faun istic and the environmental data; and the matching of two within-date analyses enables the study of the spatial co-structure between the fau nistic and the environmental data. A set of data including the tempora l change over three dates of three environmental variables and five ta xa within four sites is used as an application of such a method.