Hello specialists,

One of my students has a community matrix of soilfauna for ca.30 study sites. Species seem to respond differently to environmental parameters; but also, these species seem to interact with each other (predator-prey interactions).

When this community matrix is dealt with CCA/RDA, the results would reflect the mixed effects of environmental factors and species interactions.

Is there any fantastic technic to evaluate these factors (the effects of environmental factors and species interactions) separately? An ad-hoc method, if any..., which can be dealt with by a young student who's not familiar with high-level methods such as Bayesian modelling.

Thank you for your time.