TABLE 7.

Effects of environmental and trophic sets of variables on E. coli abundance and assemblage composition^a

Conditional (sequential) test	Variable	SS	Pseudo-F	P	Explained variance
					%	Cumulative
E. coli abundance	Physical-chemical	5.359	3.975	0.002	40.5	40.5
	Trophic	2.964	3.627	0.016	22.4	62.9
E. coli assemblage composition	Physical-chemical	54.680	4.809	0.002	45.2	45.2
	Trophic	21.081	2.796	0.008	17.4	62.6

^aVariables not significantly correlated with each other were grouped into two multivariate sets of explanatory variables: physical-chemical (including temperature, salinity, pH, dissolved oxygen, turbidity, and percentage of mud) and trophic (including sediment contents of chlorophyll a, phaeopigment, protein, carbohydrate, and lipid).