Hi all,

i have a dataset reporting the abundance (number) of prey obtained from stomach content of one predator specie. Prey are grouped in species, order and family and then for each is reported the abundance related to each of eight lunar phases. i am interested to see if there is any influence of the various lunar phase over the prey abundance species, family and order. There are many 0 since some species were missed in some stomach during particular periods....

i was thinking to use the PERMANOVA test via vegan package in rstudio but i have truble on how to set up the dataset. currently i have the first column as all lunar phases, second etc. i have the order, family and species with the respective abundance.

Also when i run the dissimilar matrix do i need to square root my data?

i was thinking to use other test such us Kruskal-Wallis test and then run a posthoc test but not sure if it is the correct appoach.

any suggestion is very appreciated.

thanks

Danilo