Cichlid Brain Morphology - Lab Exercises

Examine the data contained in BodyMeasures.txt. The file lists a series of measures for individual brain structures in range of African Great Lake Cichlids. A description of the data set is found here

• Are the sizes of structures correlated?
• Are these explained by a series of latent axes? If so, how can we interpret these?
• Which are the 5 individual species with the highest scores on the first axis?
• Are there ecological determinants for these sources of variation? (I.e., if we plot different lineages, how do they distribute?)

Competences earned this week:

1. Examine the multivariate structure of a data set
2. Relate multivariate measures with a grouping variable