Ecological analyses using multivariate methods and some examples of their application to diatomological studies were reviewed in the present paper. Multivariate analysis has become popular in ecological studies of communities, including diatom communities and assemblages. Multivariate analysis comprises a large number of methods, and each of them has its own advantages and disadvantages. Therefore, it is concluded that there is no right way of applying multivariate analysis to ecological data. Nevertheless, multivariate analysis is useful to detect ecological information such as species-to-environment association, species-to-species association, and configulation of samples.
