Table 3.

Values and differences of the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC), and the Akaike weight (w_i) for statistical models (M1–M4 in Table 1) for the sediment characteristics and microphytobenthic biomass. Models for which the level of empirical support for model i is substantial (i.e., the value of Δi is between 0 and 2) are underlined, and the best fit (for which AIC has the lowest value) is printed in bold.

Model	Sediment Characteristics						Microalgal Biomass
	Median Grain Size			Silt Fraction			Microphytobenthos
	Factors			Factors			Factors
	AIC	Δi	wi	AIC	Δi	wi	AIC	Δi	wi
M1	1962.8	35.3	0.00	1520.6	101.2	0.00	1220.5	89.8	0.00
M2	1931.8	4.3	0.05	1424.2	4.8	0.04	1135.1	4.5	0.04
M3	1927.5	0.0	0.71	1421.6	2.2	0.26	1130.7	0.0	0.65
M4	1928.5	1.0	0.24	1419.4	0.0	0.70	1132.0	1.3	0.31