Abstract:

Ordination of multidimensional data on community composition is one of the most important multivariate statistical methods used in biodiversity research. The aim of ordination is to visualize multidimensional data structure at a low-dimensional ordination space. Canoco is one of the most popular programs for ordination analysis and Canoco 4.5 was widely used for such analysis after its release in 2002, because of its simple user interface and powerful graphic tools. A new version of Cannoco, Canoco 5 was released in October 2012. This new version simplifies data entry, provides a better help system and graphics tools, simplifies steps of variation partitioning and significance tests, adds some new methods (e.g. PCNM, NMDS, association analysis of functional traits, etc.). This paper provides an overview of the major improvements to ??Canoco 5, and addresses important steps required for particular analyses.

Key words: variation partitioning, PCNM, NMDS, functional traits, phylogenetic