Cause and Correlation in Biology: A User's Guide to Path Analysis, Structural Equations and Causal Inference with R

Aimed at practising biologists, especially graduate students and researchers in ecology, this revised and expanded 3rd edition continues to explore cause-effect relationships through a series of robust statistical methods. Every chapter has been updated, and two brand-new chapters cover statistical power, Akaike information criterion statistics and equivalent models, and piecewise structural equation modelling with implicit latent variables. A new R package (pwSEM) is included to assist with the latter. The book offers advanced coverage of essential topics, including d-separation tests and path analysis, and equips biologists with the tools needed to carry out analyses in the open-source R statistical environment. Writing in a conversational style that minimises technical jargon, Shipley offers an accessible text that assumes only a very basic knowledge of introductory statistics, incorporating real-world examples that allow readers to make connections between biological phenomena and the underlying statistical concepts.

Bill Shipley is Associate Professor within the Department of Biology at Université de Sherbrooke, Canada. He is the author of From Plant Traits to Vegetation Structure: Chance and Selection in the Assembly of Ecological Communities (2012) and continues to make significant contributions to statistical methodology in ecology.