Here’s my list of useful statistics papers for the contemporary ecologist. Why you ask? Keeping up with statistics is challenging because the literature is a bit diffuse; there is no one source for these papers (though Ecology and Methods in Ecology & Evolution are good places to start).

Obviously this is a huge issue, so the list is biased towards what I’ve found to be helpful or interesting. At the very least, the papers here should provide a good place to start if you’re interested in a certain topic. For now, I’m not including books, but If I’m missing a paper, leave a comment below! Likewise, send me an email if you’re having difficulty tracking a paper down.

Exploratory Data Analysis

• Zuur et al. (2010) Methods in Ecology & Evolution – protocol for data exploration. This is first because you should graph your data first!

Generalized Linear Mixed Models (because I heart them)

• Kain et al. (2015) PeerJ – a guide for GLMMs and power analysis!
• Johnson et al. (2014) Methods in Ecology & Evolution – moar GLMM power analysis, who doesn’t need more powah?
• Warton and Hui (2011) Ecology – this paper basically rendered the arcsine transformation extinct, plus it has a catchy title!
• O’Hara and Kotze (2010) Methods in Ecology & Evolution – this one extirpated the log transform on count data, so sad. Probably the most absolutist title I’ve ever seen.
• Bolker et al. (2008) Trends in Ecology & Evolution – a foundational paper for GLMMs

Extremes

• Gaines and Denny (1993) Ecology – it all started with this one baby
• Denny et al. (2009) Ecological Monographs – an update to extremes
• Katz et al. (2005) Ecology
• Related: Special Forum in Ecology (2005) vol. 5 – on the statistics of rarity

Community Analyses and Multivariate Statistics

• Warton et al. (2012) Methods in Ecology & Evolution
• Zapala and Schork (2006) PNAS – community analysis in molecular biology? c r a z y !
  • Shout out to Komoroske et al. for bringing the permutational MANOVA to gene expression. Woot.

Pseudo-replication

• Hurlbert (1984) Ecological Monographs – Make sure you look at Table 1 #7. Hilarious.
• Oksanen (2003) Oikos – Rebuttal to the 1984 paper
• Hurlbert (2003) Oikos – Rebuttal to Oksanen

Collinearity

• Graham (2003) Ecology – Graham calls it multicollinearity, I think more often called collinearity these days

The p-value debate

• Special Forum in Ecology (2014) vol. 3

Statistical Philosophy

• Murtaugh (2007) Ecology – to be complex or simple, that is the question?

Non-linear models

• Bolker et al. (2013) Methods in Ecology & Evolution – Wilson’s growth is non-linear, check it out!

Multiple Comparisons

• Moran (2003) Oikos – Bonferonni, yay or nay? Spoiler alert! It’s nay.