Multivariate techniques 1 - Lab Exercises

Exercise 1: What's up with Cichlid Size in the African Great Lakes?

Please help me make sense of the data set CichlidBrains, which contains a number of morphological measures for body and brain structures. A description of the data file can be found here.

1. Test whether you find evidence that cichlid radiations in the three lakes are associated with differences in body size. Are cichlids of lakes Malawi, Tanganyika, and Victoria equivalent in size? If not, which lakes select for/breed bigger body sizes?

Exercise 2: What's up with Cichlid Shape in the African Great Lakes?

Use the data set from exercise 1.

1. Are cichlid radiations in the three lakes associated with differences in body shape? If so, what features allow you to distinguish cichlids from lakes Malawi, Tanganyika, and Victoria?