Primer-E Primer

Plymouth Routines In Multivariate Ecological Research (PRIMER) is a statistical package that is a collection of specialist univariate, multivariate, and graphical routines for analyzing species sampling data for community ecology. Types of data analyzed are typically species abundance, biomass, presence/absence, and percent area cover, among others. It is primarily used in the scientific community for ecological and environmental studies.

Multivariate routines include:
 * grouping (CLUSTER)
 * sorting (MDS)
 * principal component identification (PCA)
 * hypothesis testing (ANOSIM)
 * sample discrimination (SIMPER)
 * trend correlation (BEST)
 * comparisons (RELATE)
 * diversity, dominance, and distribution calculating
 * Permutational multivariate analysis of variance (PERMANOVA)

Routines can be resource intensive due to their non-parametric and permutation-based nature. Programmed in the VB.Net environment.