Abstract
This study was carried out to determine the indicator plant species of Centaurea mucronifera and Centaurea pyrrohoblephara and to compare the spatial distribution of these species in relation to the soil characteristics. For this purpose interspecific correlation analysis was used. In general 46 positive and 4 negative indicator species of C. mucronifera, and 10 positive and 3 negative indicator species of C.pyrrohoblephara were determined. The highest “C” coefficient among the positive indicator species in the C. mucronifera was determined in the absence of other indicator species in relation to the variable formed by the presence of any seven positive indicator species. The highest “C“ coefficient of C. pyrrohoblephara was determined in the absence of other indicator species in relation to the variable formed according to the presence of any one positive indicator species. Canonic discriminant analysis (CDA) was used for a comparison of soil characteristics of these species. In this analysis the discrimination was significant at a level of 5%. The success of discrimination classification was 76.7%, which is very high. This result depicts that C. mucronifera and C. pyrrohoblephara prefer different sites in terms of soil characteristics. The results subjected to an interspecific correlation analysis also support the statistically significant negative association among these species. According to the sand, loam, total lime, avaible P2O5 and organic matter contents. Latter showed that the discrimination between C. mucronifera and C. pyrrohoblephara was succesfull at a significant level of 5%. The classification succesfull for the discrimination was 76.7% , which is a very high value. This result is supported by the negative association we obtained between C. mucronifera and C. pyrrohoblephara via interspecific correlation analysis.
