Characterizing the diversity of microbial communities and understanding the environmental factors that influence community diversity are central tenets of microbial ecology. The development and application of cultivation independent molecular tools has allowed for rapid surveying of microbial community composition at unprecedented resolutions and frequencies. There is a growing need to discern robust patterns and relationships within these datasets which provide insight into microbial ecology. Pearson correlation coefficient (PCC) analysis is commonly used for identifying the linear relationship between two species, or species and environmental factors. However, this approach may not be able to capture more complex interactions which occur in situ, thus, alternative analyses were explored.