Permutation Tests to Identify Significant Constraint or Promotion Within Biological Scatterplots
ABSTRACT Scatterplots of biological datasets often have no‐data zones, which suggest constraint or promotion of dependent variables. Although methods exist to estimate boundary lines—that is, to fit lines to the edges of scatters of data points—there are, to our knowledge, none available to assess t...
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| Format: | Article |
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Wiley
2024-11-01
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| Series: | Ecology and Evolution |
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| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.70584 |
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| author | Anthony J. Mills Ruan vanMazijk |
| author_facet | Anthony J. Mills Ruan vanMazijk |
| author_sort | Anthony J. Mills |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | ABSTRACT Scatterplots of biological datasets often have no‐data zones, which suggest constraint or promotion of dependent variables. Although methods exist to estimate boundary lines—that is, to fit lines to the edges of scatters of data points—there are, to our knowledge, none available to assess the significance of the areal extents of no‐data zones. Accordingly, we propose a flexible boundary line definition paired with a permutation test of the magnitude of no‐data zones—rather than testing the shape or slope of the line as current methods do. Our proposed permutation test can be used with any method of defining a boundary line. We demonstrate our approach with empirical datasets, find no‐data zones that methods such as quantile regressions fail to detect, and discuss how our approach can quantify constraint and promotion relationships that are not always apparent with other statistics. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-7a3dcb98141a417c849a85f959db6ddb |
| institution | Kabale University |
| issn | 2045-7758 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2024-11-01 |
| publisher | Wiley |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Ecology and Evolution |
| spelling | doaj-art-7a3dcb98141a417c849a85f959db6ddb2024-12-20T04:20:58ZengWileyEcology and Evolution2045-77582024-11-011411n/an/a10.1002/ece3.70584Permutation Tests to Identify Significant Constraint or Promotion Within Biological ScatterplotsAnthony J. Mills0Ruan vanMazijk1Department of Soil Science Stellenbosch University Stellenbosch South AfricaC4 EcoSolutions (Pty) Ltd. Cape Town South AfricaABSTRACT Scatterplots of biological datasets often have no‐data zones, which suggest constraint or promotion of dependent variables. Although methods exist to estimate boundary lines—that is, to fit lines to the edges of scatters of data points—there are, to our knowledge, none available to assess the significance of the areal extents of no‐data zones. Accordingly, we propose a flexible boundary line definition paired with a permutation test of the magnitude of no‐data zones—rather than testing the shape or slope of the line as current methods do. Our proposed permutation test can be used with any method of defining a boundary line. We demonstrate our approach with empirical datasets, find no‐data zones that methods such as quantile regressions fail to detect, and discuss how our approach can quantify constraint and promotion relationships that are not always apparent with other statistics.https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.70584bivariate databoundary linenon‐parametric statisticsquantile regression |
| spellingShingle | Anthony J. Mills Ruan vanMazijk Permutation Tests to Identify Significant Constraint or Promotion Within Biological Scatterplots Ecology and Evolution bivariate data boundary line non‐parametric statistics quantile regression |
| title | Permutation Tests to Identify Significant Constraint or Promotion Within Biological Scatterplots |
| title_full | Permutation Tests to Identify Significant Constraint or Promotion Within Biological Scatterplots |
| title_fullStr | Permutation Tests to Identify Significant Constraint or Promotion Within Biological Scatterplots |
| title_full_unstemmed | Permutation Tests to Identify Significant Constraint or Promotion Within Biological Scatterplots |
| title_short | Permutation Tests to Identify Significant Constraint or Promotion Within Biological Scatterplots |
| title_sort | permutation tests to identify significant constraint or promotion within biological scatterplots |
| topic | bivariate data boundary line non‐parametric statistics quantile regression |
| url | https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.70584 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT anthonyjmills permutationteststoidentifysignificantconstraintorpromotionwithinbiologicalscatterplots AT ruanvanmazijk permutationteststoidentifysignificantconstraintorpromotionwithinbiologicalscatterplots |