Thirty years of use of multivariate quantitative methods in benthic community ecology of marine and coastal habitats: looking to the past to planning the future

The benthic community ecology of marine and coastal habitats has recently been faced with the challenge of needing a predictive model to anticipate the responses of these natural communities to environmental impacts. This challenge forces the use of quantitative methods to conduct more predictive science. This work is focused on multivariate quantitative methods applied to community ecological problems. A survey was conducted in the Science Citation Index using combined keywords that reflects multivariate quantitative methods, benthic assemblages and marine and coastal habitats. There has been analytical inertia in this research field, as the most commonly used methods have not changed over the years, and novel methods that have been developed inside and outside of ecology have not been included in the analytical tools of marine benthic ecologists. Methods that are increasing the predictive power of freshwater benthic ecology, such as machine learning, have not been used for the benthic community ecology of marine and coastal habitats.