Discriminant analysis of a Cretaceous foraminifer using shrunken estimators

Canonical variate analysis of living and fossil organisms, based on morphological characters, can sometimes greatly distort the biological interpretation (i.e., reification) of the coefficients of the eigenvectors forming the canonical variates through the inclusion of redundant within-group directions. Instability is associated with the smallest eigenvalues, particularly if these do not greatly differ from zero. In the present study of 46 borehole samples of the Late Cretaceous foraminifer Afrobolivina afraReyment, stability of the canonical variate coefficients is attained by removal of a near redundant direction of within-group variation. This leads to improved interpretability of the morphometric relationships in this species. on leave from Division of Mathematics and Statistics, CSIRO, Wembley, 6014, Western Australia.