title: Determining optimal number of clusters and with Daisy function and Gower Similarity
body: <p>I am attempting to cluster the behavioral traits of 250 species into life-history strategies.  The trait data consists of both numerical and nominal variables.  I am relatively new to R and to cluster analysis, but I believe the best option to find the distances for these points is to use the gower similarity method within the daisy function.  1) Is that the best method?</p>
  
  <p>Once I have these distances, I would like to find significant clusters.  I have looked into pvclust and like its ability to give me the strength of the cluster.  However, I have not been able to modify the code to accept the distance measurements previously made using daisy.  I have unsuccessfully tried to follow the advice given here <a href="https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/10347/making-a-heatmap-with-a-precomputed-distance-matrix-and-data-matrix-in-r/10349#10349">https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/10347/making-a-heatmap-with-a-precomputed-distance-matrix-and-data-matrix-in-r/10349#10349</a> and using the code obtained here <a href="http://www.is.titech.ac.jp/~shimo/prog/pvclust/pvclust_unofficial_090824/pvclust.R" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://www.is.titech.ac.jp/~shimo/prog/pvclust/pvclust_unofficial_090824/pvclust.R</a></p>
  
  <p>2)Can anyone help me to modify the existing code to accept my distance measurements?</p>
  
  <p>3) Or, is there another better way to determine the number of significant clusters?</p>
  
  <p>I thank all in advance for your help.</p>