Interpreting songbird subboundaries

The table of Subboundary Analysis output is shown automatically once you generate the analysis. If you closed it and wish to reopen the table, go to the Projects menu, choose table and select the "local warbler boundaries: subboundary analysis results" table. Alternatively, right click on that analysis in the Results tab of the Project Window.

The table includes values and p-values for each of the subboundary statistics. The histograms show the distribution of each statistic, with the original statistic for the boundaries shown as a slim red bar.

The following table will help you interpret the seven measures of "boundary-ness" based on the upper and lower p-values given in the results table. In essence, there were fewer and longer boundaries (fewer subboundaries of higher mean length with less branchiness) than expected by chance.

Statistic	Meaning	Value	interpretation
NS	number of subboundaries	lower p-value significant	boundary-like: very few subboundaries
N1	number of singleton Boundary Elements	not significant
Lmax	maximum subboundary length (number of linked BEs)	upper p-value significant	boundary-like: boundary is cohesive
Lmean	mean subboundary length	not significant
Dmax	maximum subboundary diameter	upper p-value significant	boundary-like: boundaries are not excessively branchy
Dmean	mean subboundary diameter	not significant
D/L	mean diameter-to-length ratio (indicates branchiness)	not significant

Subboundary diameter is the average shortest path length between each pair of BEs in a subboundary.

The next question is: are the local warbler boundaries associated with edges of vegetation types?