Data Analysis Considerations

Investigating patterns of deep-sea biodiversity over large spatial scales is often problematic; existing data are frequently incomplete or spatially biased, and there is little scope for obtaining new data. In particular, the confounding effects of depth can severely limit research findings, because faunal assemblages change much more rapidly along a bathymetric gradient than horizontally across the oceans. The challenge is to extract scientific secrets from this messy data through appropriate analytical techniques. This requires careful construction of the hypotheses, assessment of the types of biological and environmental data available, the accounting of sampling biases by the analytical methods, and restrained interpretation of results.