Software Links
Disclaimer: listing software here does not necessarily imply endorsement. It simply means I have stumbled across the link, or that somebody brought it to my attention. The below include commercial products, experimental products, and range in price from free, to unaffordable. Most links are related to ordination, but some perform other kinds of analysis of interest to community ecologists. Much of the text in the alphabetical list represents direct quotes from the vendors. A special note of caution when doing comparative shopping: without pointing fingers, I suspect that the claims of some of the packages are a little over-blown, and some of them inaccurately represent the products of their competitors. I would be glad to hear of other links, or reports of dead links.
The links are available both alphabetically and sorted by method.
- ADE-4: Exploratory and Euclidean methods in Environmental sciences
- BIOTA: Specimen-Based, Biological Data and Collections Management Software for Individuals, Institutions, and Projects, by Robert K. Colwell
- BLOSSOM statistical software for randomization tests such as MRPP
- Bray-Curtis: A DOS-based 32-bit program for Bray-Curtis ordination, available FREE from Federico Spinazzi
- Brodgar: Software for multivariate analysis and multivariate time series analysis
- CANOCO for Windows 4.0
- CANODRAW: a program written by Petr Smilauer to graph the results of CANOCO and perform exploratory analyses on ordination results
- CAP - Community Analysis Package: a multipurpose package for community data, including classification and ordination
- COENOS - an MSDOS program (with WINDOWS under development) for automatic tabular sorting - this link is for downloading a self-extracting file.
- Data Loom is a freeware Macintosh program for exploring multivariate data. It displays the data in a parallel coordinates chart, where each data variable is represented by a vertical axis and each data point is represented by a trace drawn across all the axes.
- DECODA - Software for management and analysis (including classification and ordination) of ecological data
- DECORANA, TWINSPAN and TABLCORN Programs written by Mark Hill
- DistPCoA and RdaCca - DistPCoA is a FORTRAN program (source code and compiled versions for Macintosh and DOS) for principal coordinate analysis, including corrections for negative eigenvalues, and RdaCca (also with source code) is a pedagogically-oriented program for calculating and illustrating key properties of Redundancy Analysis and Canonical Correspondence Analysis.
- ECO-LOGICA SOFTWARE: Programs to aid ecological community analysis, including Multivariate Data Explorer and Dendrographics
- EstimateS: Software to estimate species diversity by a number of algorithms, by Robert K. Colwell
- Exeter software: A large number of DOS and WINDOWS-based programs for ecology and evolution, including programs for diversity statistics, systematics, resampling statistics, spatial analysis, curve fitting, population dynamics, and more.
- GENSTAT - a comprehensive statistical package that includes generalized linear modelling, principal component analysis, canonical variates analysis, factor rotation, principal coordinate analysis, Procrustes rotation, correspondence analysis, discriminant analysis, hierarchical and nonhierarchical cluster analysis, multidimensional scaling, and biplots
- GS+ for Windows: software for geostatistical mapping (e.g. kriging) and variography.
- INDVAL: a program to produce and interpret species indicator values of a previously constructed classification
- Kovach Computing Service: A wide variety of software for ecological data analysis and simulation, including MVSP.
- Mantel Test - Free software by Eric Bonnet for the Mantel test (matrix correlations)
- MEANSIM6 - Free Windows-based software for mean similarity analysis, a method of assessing the strength of a classification of many objects (sites) into a relatively small number of groups.
- MICROCOMPUTER POWER: U.S. Supplier of CANOCO, CANODRAW, and Cornell Ecology Programs
- Mosaic: a free pedagogical package for ordination and cluster analysis
- MRPP and Spatial Scaling Programs - by Mario Biondini
- Multiv by Valério Pillar. Includes ordination, classification, and bootstrapping. There is a version for Mac and for Windows. A free version for small data sets is available in the form of MultivMinor.
- Multivariate Software, Inc.: for structural equation modeling and similar analyses
- MULVA: a processing environment for data analysis in vegetation science. Includes ordination, classification, and data manipulations.
- MVSP: a software package for ordination (many methods) and classification
- NETMUL : for online multivariate data analysis through the internet
- Oksanen and Minchin's Corrections for Instability in ordination: This includes a discussion of the reported DECORANA/CANOCO bug (no longer an issue with the latest version of PC-ORD and CANOCO). Further discussion of the convergence problem by C.J.F. ter Braak
- Online software for clustering: A listing of sites with classification software available for download (includes other kinds of multivariate analysis as well)
- Parallel Analysis - SAS programs for determining significant principal components
- PAST - "PAST is a free, easy-to-use data analysis package aimed at paleontology. Inspired by PALSTAT, it includes common statistical, plotting and modelling functions"
- PCA-H MATLAB: Windows software for PCA-H.
- PC-ORD : A program by Bruce McCune for a wide variety of ordination and classification methods.
- PISCES offers software for the analysis of species richness, diversity, population growth, and marine food webs. Direct gradient analysis (RDA and CCA) has recently been added.
- PopTools: Free. Excel Macros for population biology – not really ordination, but there is an eigenanalysis macro, and these programs are good examples of what can be done in Excel.
- PRIMER: Software from the Plymouth Marine Laboratory, including BIOENV and a variety of ecological analyses
- ProSoft :Taxonomy, morphology, population genetics programs and data about the environment.
- R Package - This is a group of programs (Macintosh and VAX/VMS) that will allow you to perform with ease various complex multidimensional and spatial analysis procedures.
- R Project - the emerging open-source software environment for statistical computing. Many contributors have provided useful multivariate methods. See here for more ecologically-related contributions.
- Rarefaction Calculator: An online web program for rarefaction
- RdaCca: A free, pedagogical program for RDA and CCA. The site also includes a new method, polynomial RdaCca
- SCIENTIA publishing - programs for ordination, diversity analysis, classification, information analysis, and more.
- SPECRICH - An online program that computes "species richness" or total number of species from empirical species abundance distribution data. Program written by J.E. Hines based on methods described by Burnham and Overton.
- Statistical Ecology: BASIC code for the analytical techniques presented in the book of the same name by Ludwig and Reynolds. Includes a number of ordination, classification, and spatial analysis routines.
- SYN-TAX - a program (DOS and MAC, Windows under development) for PCA, PCoA, CA, NMDS, CCA, RDA, seriation, Procrustes analysis , testing ordination dissimilarities, hierarchical and nonhierarchical clustering, fuzzy clustering, minimum spanning trees, block clustering, comparison of dendrograms, partitions, consensus partitions, simulated sampling and pattern analysis in species assemblages, character ranking, graphic displays.
- Vegana- written in Java, and includes a range of multivariate ordination and classification techniques, as well as data editing capabilities.
- Vista- the visual statistics system. For multivariate data display and correspondence analysis, among other things.
- VTAB - A program for classification, tabular arrangement of classes under the Braun-Blanquet system, summary statistics, and data manipulation.
Multivariate software, sorted by method
This list was created based on the claims of web documentation, rather than actual experience with each program. Some of the sites are easier to navigate than are others; therefore some of the sites will be more completely and correctly classified below than others. Note that R Project is a special case; code is contributed by the user community. It is quickly becoming the language of statistical computing.
This page was created and is maintained by Michael Palmer.
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