Dear R-help, We are conducting a distance-based redundancy analysis using capscale and then testing for statistical significance for six terms in the model for the constrained ordination using anova.cca in the vegan package. The significance test is sequential, i.e., testing for significance of a term only after accounting for all preceding terms. Could someone please provide us with either the actual formula for the pseudo-F statistic or a reference that provides this formula?
We ask because we are doing the exact same analysis in another program (using distLM in PRIMER 6 v 6.1.13 and PERMANOVA+ v 1.0.3 from PRIMER-E), but we are getting very different pseudo-F ratios despite specifying the exact same order of model terms, using the same Bray-Curtis distance measure (distance matrices produced by the two programs are the same), and using the same sequential test for significance. Below is a table displaying the order of the model terms and the pseudo-F values computed by R and by PRIMER (we also ran the same analysis in CANOCO which showed the same results in pseudo-F values as PRIMER). We have not been able to figure out why we get very different pseudo-F values, leading us to believe that R calculates pseudo-F values differently than PRIMER for the sequential tests. Furthermore, constrained ordination outputs, i.e., eigenvalues, proportion of variability explained by each constrained axes, etc. appear to be identical between the two programs. Below we provide (1) the table showing the different pseudo-F values; (2) the formula used by PRIMER to calculate pseudo-F values that we think is the same being used in R, but need confirmation; and (3) the R code used for this analysis. (1) Table Model Social Variables PRIMER pseudo-F R pseudo-F SEQUENTIAL TESTS GroupSize 1.1904 1.5528 Board 1.5079 1.8872 MtgStyle 1.1326 1.4007 DmStyle 1.0971 1.3437 DifView 1.4892 1.7299 VolAuton 2.2923 2.2925 (2) pseudo-F formula We know that PRIMER uses the following formula to calculate the pseudo-F for a sequential test of significance (equation 4.3, Anderson, Gorley, and Clarke 2008, Chapter 4. Pg. 129, and based on pseudo-F equation in Legendre and Anderson (1999), Ecological Monographs vol. 69): F= (SSFull - SSReduced)/(qFull-qReduced) (SSTotal-SSFull)/(N - qFull - 1) (3) R code ## creating Bray-Curtis of Biodiversity data H.BC <- vegdist(H.Full [,14:211], "bray") ## Distance based redundancy analysis (dbRDA) m1<-capscale(H.BC ~ GroupSize + Board + MtgStyle + DmStyle + DifView + VolAuton, SScomp [,14:19], distance = "euclidean", add = TRUE) ### NOTE: pseudo-F values are the same with or without correcting for negative eigenvalues (although they are different from other programs). ## Sequential test for terms anova.cca(m1, by="terms", perm.max=1000, permu=500) Thank you very much for any help or insights that anyone can provide, Kristen Kristen A. Ross, PhD Post Doctoral Researcher University of Illinois at Chicago kristenross...@gmail.com and Research Associate Green Mountain College One Brennan Circle Poultney, VT 05764 [[alternative HTML version deleted]] ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.