Don't let spurious accusations of pseudoreplication limit our ability to learn from natural experiments (and other messy kinds of ecological monitoring)

Ecology and Evolution
G Matt Davies, Alan Gray

Abstract

Pseudoreplication is defined as the use of inferential statistics to test for treatment effects where treatments are not replicated and/or replicates are not statistically independent. It is a genuine but controversial issue in ecology particularly in the case of costly landscape-scale manipulations, behavioral studies where ethics or other concerns may limit sample sizes, ad hoc monitoring data, and the analysis of natural experiments where chance events occur at a single site. Here key publications on the topic are reviewed to illustrate the debate that exists about the conceptual validity of pseudoreplication. A survey of ecologists and case studies of experimental design and publication issues are used to explore the extent of the problem, ecologists' solutions, reviewers' attitudes, and the fate of submitted manuscripts. Scientists working across a range of ecological disciplines regularly come across the problem of pseudoreplication and build solutions into their designs and analyses. These include carefully defining hypotheses and the population of interest, acknowledging the limits of statistical inference and using statistical approaches including nesting and random effects. Many ecologists face considerable challenges...Continue Reading

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Citations

Apr 5, 2019·Ecological Applications : a Publication of the Ecological Society of America·Jarod P LyonCorey J A Bradshaw
Jun 26, 2018·Methods in Ecology and Evolution·C Patrick Doncaster, Rebecca Spake
Feb 6, 2020·Ecological Applications : a Publication of the Ecological Society of America·Olivier BoissierPierre-Michel Forget
Nov 16, 2017·Ecotoxicology·R A Bailey, J J D Greenwood
Jun 26, 2018·Ecology and Evolution·Mário L GarbinAry G Silva
Dec 12, 2018·PeerJ·Eric Jordán-DahlgrenRosa E Rodríguez-Martínez
May 9, 2019·Environmental Science and Pollution Research International·Irena M GrześPiotr Piszczek
Jul 30, 2020·Ecology and Evolution·Ko KonnoTatsuya Amano
Mar 31, 2017·PloS One·Marjo PalviainenKajar Köster
Jul 18, 2020·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·Ashish N Nerlekar, Joseph W Veldman
Jul 22, 2017·Genome Génome / Conseil National De Recherches Canada·William D EatonMehrdad Hajibabaei
Jan 5, 2018·Ecology and Evolution·Ivan MonteiroOg DeSouza
Nov 23, 2018·Animals : an Open Access Journal From MDPI·Gemma CarderNeil D'Cruze
Nov 28, 2019·Nature Communications·Sophie A Comer-WarnerStefan Krause
Feb 13, 2020·Scientific Reports·Stanley E LazicMarcus R Munafo
Nov 26, 2020·PloS One·Giorgia BorrielloGiorgio Galiero
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Nov 14, 2020·The Journal of Experimental Biology·Tom MulderFritz Vollrath
Mar 23, 2021·Environmental Entomology·Emmy L EngasserMary Liz Jameson
Apr 30, 2021·Die Naturwissenschaften·Tom MulderFritz Vollrath
Jul 29, 2021·Journal of Experimental Botany·Alistair RogersJohn E Lunn

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Software Mentioned

R
lme4
Ecolog
R Core Team
lmer
PERMANOVA

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