Plymouth Routines In Multivariate Ecological Research (PRIMER) is a statistical package that is a collection of specialist univariate, multivariate, and graphical routines for analyzing species sampling data for community ecology.[1] Types of data analyzed are typically species abundance, biomass, presence/absence, and percent area cover, among others. It is primarily used in the scientific community for ecological and environmental studies.
Multivariate routines include:
grouping (CLUSTER)
sorting (MDS)
principal component identification (PCA)
hypothesis testing (ANOSIM)
sample discrimination (SIMPER)
trend correlation (BEST)
comparisons (RELATE)
diversity, dominance, and distribution calculating
Permutational multivariate analysis of variance (PERMANOVA)[2]
Routines can be resource intensive due to their non-parametric and permutation-based nature. Programmed in the VB.Net environment.
