R help - Jun 2014 - question about how the mantel test is run in the ade4 package

Hi,

I'm running a mantel test of the location of individuals in space against
the behavioural score.  I wanted to see whether those with similar
behavioural scores are closer together in space relative to those that are
further apart.
This is the code I have written:

nest.dists<-dist(cbind(aa$long_ym, aa$lat_xm,diag=TRUE, upper=TRUE))
#distance matrix of locations of individuals
eb.dists<-dist(cbind(aa$COR_LOC, diag=TRUE, upper=TRUE)) # behavioural score
as.matrix(nest.dists)
as.matrix(eb.dists)
mantel.rtest(nest.dists, eb.dists)

My question is regarding when I save the output into a matrix along the
diagonal the above and below values are symmetric so when I run the mantel
test is it that all the values are being included in the or just those that
are below or above the diagonal?
I've run it using just the distance matrix (excluding as.matrix(nest.dists)
and
as.matrix(eb.dists) and the output was the same, but I was just wondering
how it's actually analyzed).


Best,

Monaly.

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