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.^[1] 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.

PRIMER
Developer(s)	Plymouth Routines in Multivariate Ecology Research
Stable release	7
Operating system	Windows
Type	Numerical analysis
License	Proprietary
Website	http://www.primer-e.com/

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)^[2]

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