2.3. Statistical analysis
We analyzed the influence of our treatments using nonmetric
multidimensional scaling (NMS; PC ORD; McCune and Mefford,
1999). NMS is an ordination technique well suited for large, nonnormal,
zero-inflated data sets, making it an ideal statistical technique
for this study. It also allows for the consideration of several
parameters and consolidates parameters into only a few dimensions
by conducting an iterative search for the solution with the
least amount of stress. The stress value describes the congruity
between the actual ordination and the calculated dissimilarity
matrix used to calculate the ordination (Jongman et al., 1995) and
the ‘‘best’’ solution is characterized by the lowest stress (McCune