POTENTIAL BIASES IN SITE AND SPECIES SELECTION FOR ECOLOGICAL MONITORING

A number of the contributions to this workshop (particularly in the se ssion on biodiversity and population monitoring) have stressed the imp ortance of choosing appropriate species and locations for ecological m onitoring. This is of pragmatic necessity: it is impossible to monitor all species at all locations. The purpose of this note is to caution against some possible pitfalls in the selection of species and sites. These pitfalls are a result of the statistical concept of regression.