Function mantel  finds the Mantel statistic as a matrix
  correlation between two dissimilarity matrices, and function
  mantel.partial finds the partial Mantel statistic as the
  partial matrix correlation between three dissimilarity matrices.  The
  significance of the statistic is evaluated by permuting rows and
  columns of the first dissimilarity matrix. Test is one-sided and only
  tests that distances are positively correlated.
mantel(xdis, ydis, method="pearson", permutations=999, strata = NULL,
    na.rm = FALSE, parallel = getOption("mc.cores"))
mantel.partial(xdis, ydis, zdis, method = "pearson", permutations = 999, 
    strata = NULL, na.rm = FALSE, parallel = getOption("mc.cores"))
# S3 method for mantel
summary(object, ...)The function returns a list of class mantel with following
  components:
Function call.
Correlation method used, as returned by
    cor.test.
The Mantel statistic.
Empirical significance level from permutations.
A vector of permuted values. The distribution of
    permuted values can be inspected with permustats 
    function.
Number of permutations.
A list of control values for the permutations
    as returned by the function how.
Distance object of class "dist" or
    symmetric square matrices of distances. Only the lower triangle of
    square matrices is used.  The first object xdis will be
    permuted in permutation tests.
Correlation method, as accepted by cor:
    "pearson", "spearman" or "kendall".
a list of control values for the permutations
    as returned by the function how, or the
    number of permutations required, or a permutation matrix where each
    row gives the permuted indices.
An integer vector or factor specifying the strata for permutation. If supplied, observations are permuted only within the specified strata.
Remove missing values in calculation of Mantel correlation. Use this option with care: Permutation tests can be biased, in particular if two matrices had missing values in matching positions.
Number of parallel processes or a predefined socket
    cluster.  With parallel = 1 uses ordinary, non-parallel
    processing. The parallel processing is done with parallel
    package.
Result object.
Arguments passed to summary.permustats
    These include alternative to select the sidedness of the
    test.
Jari Oksanen
Mantel statistic is simply a correlation between entries of two
  dissimilarity matrices (some use cross products, but these are
  linearly related).  However, the significance cannot be directly
  assessed, because there are \(N(N-1)/2\) entries for just \(N\)
  observations.  Mantel developed asymptotic test, but here we use
  permutations of \(N\) rows and columns of dissimilarity
  matrix. Only the first matrix (xdist) will be permuted, and
  the second is kept constant. See permutations for
  additional details on permutation tests in Vegan.
Partial Mantel statistic uses partial correlation
  conditioned on the third matrix. Only the first matrix is permuted so
  that the correlation structure between second and first matrices is
  kept constant. Although mantel.partial silently accepts other
  methods than "pearson", partial correlations will probably be
  wrong with other methods.
Borcard & Legendre (2012) warn against using partial Mantel test and
  recommend instead Mantel correlogram
  (mantel.correlog).
The function uses cor, which should accept
  alternatives pearson for product moment correlations and
  spearman or kendall for rank correlations.
Borcard, D. & Legendre, P. (2012) Is the Mantel correlogram powerful enough to be useful in ecological analysis? A simulation study. Ecology 93: 1473-1481.
Legendre, P. and Legendre, L. (2012) Numerical Ecology. 3rd English Edition. Elsevier.
mantel.correlog.
## Is vegetation related to environment?
data(varespec)
data(varechem)
veg.dist <- vegdist(varespec) # Bray-Curtis
env.dist <- vegdist(scale(varechem), "euclid")
mantel(veg.dist, env.dist)
mantel(veg.dist, env.dist, method="spear")
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