Water trophicity of Utricularia microhabitats identlfied by means of SOFM as a tool in ecological modeling
The study objects were 48 microhabitats of five <em>Utricularia</em> species in Lower and Upper Silesia (POLAND). The aim of the paper was to focus on application of the Self-Organizing Feature Map in assessment of water trophicity in <em>Utricularia</em> microhabitats, and to describe how SOFM can be used for the study of ecological subjects. This method was compared with the hierarchical tree plot of cluster analysis to check whether this techniques give similar results. In effect, both topological map of SOFM and dendrogram of cluster analysis show differences between <em>Utricularia</em> species microhabitats in respect of water quality, from eutrophic for <em>U. vulgaris</em> to dystrophic for <em>U. minor</em> and <em>U. intermedia</em>. The used methods give similar results and constitute a validation of the SOFM method in this type of studies.