Towards sound use of statistics in nematology

Abstract

Issues of estimating the magnitudes of differences among various treatments, conception of optimum sampling size, determining spatial and temporal distribution of nematode ecology, nematode-host suitability designation, prediction of crop yield loss caused by plant-parasitic nematodes and other effects were discussed. So, this study presents highlights of developments in nematological statistics. Moreover, modern statistics should address issues of other nematology-associated disciplines. For example, statistics applied to compare the reliability of molecularly examined samples showed that fairly low-cost metabarcoding had significantly better accuracy in quantifying and identifying the extracted entomopathogenic nematodes (EPNs) than that of quantitative polymerase chain reaction. Thus, statistics could contribute to a cost-effective, value-added approach to pest management programs. Moreover, an empirical method to improve application strategies of EPNs could be recently modified concerning index of nematode dispersion in terms of the thumb rule value for the nematode-random distribution.