A Study of Faunal Resemblance Using Numerical Taxonomy and Factor Analysis

This paper is an analysis of patterns of animal distribution by means of (1) calculation and clustering of a distance matrix, (2) factor analysis and trend surface maps of scores of five centroid factors, and (3) a stereogram of the counties projected on the principal axes. The data, which are the incidences of amphibians, reptiles, and mammals in the 105 counties of Kansas, were used principally for illustrative purposes, and comprise 185 OTU's consisting of 137 species (37 of which were subdivided into 85 subspecies). Five factors were extracted from a matrix of correlations among OTU's and mapped by trend surface analysis. These were shown to be of interest even though they yielded overlapping faunal zones. The predictive powers of the method, by the inclusion of environmental variables, is discussed.