I’m posting a general question to those who know something about ecological statistics. As part of my masters thesis, I want to compare bird species richness and abundance of birds detected in transects in mature forests and mature forests experiencing low-density housing development (I’ve worked hard to select sites that make this comparison valid and I will be collecting data in a way that will allow me to assign probabilities of detection in both habitat types).
I have 12 forested transects and 12 residential transects. I will visit each site three times. I’m essentially searching for the appropriate statistical analysis to compare mean number of species/mean number of individuals/and mean diversity index values between the two habitat groups. I’m assuming that basic parametric tests such as t-test/one-way ANOVA would be appropriate, however my thesis committee challenged me to see if there aren’t better ways of comparing the data, particularly since there will be repeated visits to each transect. Any help/thoughts/suggestions would be most welcome.
