Refer to the Journal of Biogeography (Dec. 2003) study of ants in Mongolia, presented in Exercise. Data on annual rainfall, maximum daily temperature, and number of ant species recorded at each of 11 study sites are reproduced in the table below and saved in the GOBIANTS file.

a. Consider the data for the five sites in the Dry Steppe region only. Rank the five annual rainfall amounts. Then rank the five maximum daily temperature values.
b. Use the ranks from part a to find and interpret the rank correlation between annual rainfall (y) and maximum daily temperature (x).
c. Repeat parts a and b for the six sites in the Gobi Desert region.
d. Now consider the rank correlation between the number of ant species (y) and annual rainfall (x). Using all the data, compute and interpret Spearman's rank correlation statistic.

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Annual Max. Daily Number of Site Region Rainfall (mm) Temp. (C Ant Species 1 Dry Steppe 2 Dry Steppe 3 Dry Steppe 4 Dry Steppe 5 Dry Steppe 196 196 179 197 149 5.7 5.7 7.0 8.0 8.5 10.7 11.4 10.9 11.4 11.4 11.4 52 6 Gobi Desert 112 7 Gobi Deser 125 49 8 Gobi Desert 4 4 9 Gobi Desert125 84 11 Gobi Desert 115 10 Gobi Desert 4