Hi,
Apologies if this is not posted in the right section. I am currently in the process of analyzing a time-series dataset where the same biological communities are routinely sampled annually. When I depict the structure of the communities, I like to use some hierarchical clustering. I try to group the communities sampled from a particular year into 3-4 clusters of at least three communities.
Since the data comes from the same region, in the same season, is it unreasonable to expect to get some fixed level of similarity among years, so that the communities fall into the same number of clusters, assuming no undue influence from some extreme exogenous event?
Please know that I work with these datasets with the Primer software context as I have to be to swap results with collaborators.
All responses are duly appreciated.
Apologies if this is not posted in the right section. I am currently in the process of analyzing a time-series dataset where the same biological communities are routinely sampled annually. When I depict the structure of the communities, I like to use some hierarchical clustering. I try to group the communities sampled from a particular year into 3-4 clusters of at least three communities.
Since the data comes from the same region, in the same season, is it unreasonable to expect to get some fixed level of similarity among years, so that the communities fall into the same number of clusters, assuming no undue influence from some extreme exogenous event?
Please know that I work with these datasets with the Primer software context as I have to be to swap results with collaborators.
All responses are duly appreciated.