Y. Cao et al., EFFECTS OF SAMPLE-SIZE (REPLICATE NUMBER) ON SIMILARITY MEASURES IN RIVER BENTHIC AUFWUCHS COMMUNITY ANALYSIS, Water environment research, 69(1), 1997, pp. 107-114
The effects of sample size (the number of replicates) on 11 similarity
measures were investigated using a set of freshwater macroinvertebrat
e samples and a randomization procedure for resampling. Most of these
indices were strongly affected by sample size. However, as sample size
increased, species composition and relative abundance changed signifi
cantly and the real similarity between two replicate samples increased
substantially. Responsiveness to sample size dictates the sensitivity
of a similarity measure to community change. The relative independenc
e of sample size of some similarity measures results from strongly ove
rweighting abundant species. CY dissimilarity similarity measure showe
d the highest sensitivity, followed by Canberra metric.