Hi all, I am not much of an ecologist and I see there is a long list of different calclators for statistics describing similarity in community membership and structure. How do I pick which one is best to use? Some are familiar and those seem comforting because of that, but if newer metrics are better, perhaps I should use those… however, I get frightened when I look at the page in the wiki for some unfamiliar statistics and see a bunch of equations. Is there some useful reference (online or in book form) that discusses these statistics and the situations in which each is best used? I am a concrete thinker and I need someone to explain to me when a particular statistic is useful (that is, what assumptions it makes and what it should not be used for, etc.) because I’m not accustomed to figuring this all out myself from math. I can try to find the original references for each statistic, but if everything were compiled in one place, it would save me (and all those who will come after me with the same question) a lot of time.
If such a handy reference does not exist, can someone please write one? It would probably be cited five zillion times.