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Mahalanobis distances and ecological niche modelling: correcting a chi-squared probability error

The Mahalanobis distance is a statistical technique that can be used to measure how distant a point is from the centre of a multivariate normal distribution. By measuring Mahalanobis distances in environmental space ecologists have also used the technique to model: ecological niches, habitat suitabi...

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Autor principal: Etherington, Thomas R.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6450376/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30972255
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.6678
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author Etherington, Thomas R.
author_facet Etherington, Thomas R.
author_sort Etherington, Thomas R.
collection PubMed
description The Mahalanobis distance is a statistical technique that can be used to measure how distant a point is from the centre of a multivariate normal distribution. By measuring Mahalanobis distances in environmental space ecologists have also used the technique to model: ecological niches, habitat suitability, species distributions, and resource selection functions. Unfortunately, the original description of the Mahalanobis distance technique for ecological modelling contained an error describing how Mahalanobis distances could be converted into probabilities using a chi-squared distribution. This error has been repeated in the literature, and is present in popular modelling software. In the hope of correcting this error to maximise the potential application of the Mahalanobis distance technique within the ecological modelling community, I explain how Mahalanobis distances are calculated, and through a virtual ecology experiment demonstrate how to correctly produce probabilities and discuss the implications of the error for previous Mahalanobis distance studies.
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spelling pubmed-64503762019-04-10 Mahalanobis distances and ecological niche modelling: correcting a chi-squared probability error Etherington, Thomas R. PeerJ Biogeography The Mahalanobis distance is a statistical technique that can be used to measure how distant a point is from the centre of a multivariate normal distribution. By measuring Mahalanobis distances in environmental space ecologists have also used the technique to model: ecological niches, habitat suitability, species distributions, and resource selection functions. Unfortunately, the original description of the Mahalanobis distance technique for ecological modelling contained an error describing how Mahalanobis distances could be converted into probabilities using a chi-squared distribution. This error has been repeated in the literature, and is present in popular modelling software. In the hope of correcting this error to maximise the potential application of the Mahalanobis distance technique within the ecological modelling community, I explain how Mahalanobis distances are calculated, and through a virtual ecology experiment demonstrate how to correctly produce probabilities and discuss the implications of the error for previous Mahalanobis distance studies. PeerJ Inc. 2019-04-02 /pmc/articles/PMC6450376/ /pubmed/30972255 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.6678 Text en ©2019 Etherington http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Biogeography
Etherington, Thomas R.
Mahalanobis distances and ecological niche modelling: correcting a chi-squared probability error
title Mahalanobis distances and ecological niche modelling: correcting a chi-squared probability error
title_full Mahalanobis distances and ecological niche modelling: correcting a chi-squared probability error
title_fullStr Mahalanobis distances and ecological niche modelling: correcting a chi-squared probability error
title_full_unstemmed Mahalanobis distances and ecological niche modelling: correcting a chi-squared probability error
title_short Mahalanobis distances and ecological niche modelling: correcting a chi-squared probability error
title_sort mahalanobis distances and ecological niche modelling: correcting a chi-squared probability error
topic Biogeography
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6450376/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30972255
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.6678
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