Distributions and Community Composition of Birds in Iraq’s Central Marsh

Figure 5

NMDS cluster analysis for birds in the CM. (a) shows a dendrogram based on a Bray-Curtis dissimilarity matrix. This dendrogram was then cut to give three groupings based on similarities in bird community composition as shown both by the dendrogram and by the NMDS ordination plot. (b) shows the results of the NMDS ordination, with each zone/transect complement (e.g., zone one transect one is site one and zone one transect two is site two) coloured according to grouping and surrounded by a convex hull. The ordination shows three different groupings of sites (note: the inclusion of site three within cluster one does not represent a failing with our method but a consequence of the way NMDS plots are visualized).

(a)

(b)