Mantel Tests
Comparing Distance Matrices
Spatial Autocorrelation
• Spatial autocorrelation means that
observations that are close to one
another in space are more similar to
one another than to other
observations farther away
– Nearby sites are closer in time
– Nearby sites are closer in assemblage
composition
Mantel Test
• Widely used in ecology to compare
two distance matrices
• Correlation is a measure of spatial
autocorrelation (pearson,
spearman, or kendall’s tau
• Significance must be determined by
permutations of the distance matrix
Example
• Snodgrass site – does the presence
of decorated/prestige artifacts show
spatial autocorrelation?
• Load the data set and convert the
variables to dichotomies
• Compute distance matrices and plot
91*90/2 = 4095 distance pairs
> pa <- sapply(Snodgrass[,8:39], function(x) as.numeric(as.logical(x)))
> Snodgrass3 <- data.frame(Snodgrass[,1:7], pa, Snodgrass[,40:41])
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
library(vegan)
S.dist <-dist(Snodgrass3[,c(26, 27, 29:38)], method="binary")
A.dist <-dist(Snodgrass3$Area, method="euclidean")
G.dist <-dist(Snodgrass3[,1:2], method="euclidean")
plot(G.dist, S.dist, pch=".", cex=2)
abline(lm(S.dist~G.dist), col="red", lwd=2)
GS.man <- mantel(G.dist, S.dist)
GS.man
Mantel statistic based on Pearson's product-moment correlation
Call:
mantel(xdis = G.dist, ydis = S.dist)
Mantel statistic r: 0.1271
Significance: 0.001
Empirical upper confidence limits of r:
90%
95% 97.5%
99%
0.0282 0.0364 0.0455 0.0551
Based on 999 permutations
> str(GS.man)
List of 6
$ call
: language mantel(xdis = G.dist, ydis = S.dist)
$ method
: chr "Pearson's product-moment correlation"
$ statistic
: num 0.127
$ signif
: num 0.001
$ perm
: num [1:999] -0.01123 -0.00424 -0.003...
$ permutations: num 999
- attr(*, "class")= chr "mantel"
Mantel Correlogram
• Correlation plotted by distance to
see at what distances the
correlation peaks
S.correl <- mantel.correlog(S.dist, G.dist)
plot(S.correl)
print(S.correl)
Mantel Correlogram Analysis
Call:
mantel.correlog(D.eco = S.dist, D.geo = G.dist)
class.index
n.dist
24.561714 278.000000
53.465764 666.000000
82.369815 848.000000
111.273865 908.000000
140.177916 1038.000000
169.081966 1010.000000
197.986017 914.000000
226.890067 876.000000
255.794118 640.000000
284.698168 462.000000
313.602219 318.000000
342.506269 174.000000
371.410320
56.000000
D.cl.1
D.cl.2
D.cl.3
D.cl.4
D.cl.5
D.cl.6
D.cl.7
D.cl.8
D.cl.9
D.cl.10
D.cl.11
D.cl.12
D.cl.13
--Signif. codes:
Mantel.cor Pr(Mantel) Pr(corrected)
0.038772
0.004
0.004 **
0.065959
0.001
0.002 **
0.054817
0.002
0.004 **
0.023341
0.070
0.070 .
0.027887
0.045
0.090 .
-0.012919
0.221
0.221
-0.023078
0.073
0.210
NA
NA
NA
NA
NA
NA
NA
NA
NA
NA
NA
NA
NA
NA
NA
NA
NA
NA
0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1
Partial Mantel Test
• We can control for a third variable to
see if that eliminates the spatial
autocorrelation
> GSA.man <- mantel.partial(G.dist, S.dist, A.dist)
> GSA.man
Partial Mantel statistic based on Pearson's product-moment correlation
Call:
mantel.partial(xdis = G.dist, ydis = S.dist, zdis = A.dist)
Mantel statistic r: 0.1286
Significance: 0.001
Empirical upper confidence limits of r:
90%
95% 97.5%
99%
0.0270 0.0357 0.0439 0.0542
Based on 999 permutations