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Techniques are developed for the analysis of community organization and bench tested on a set of simple model systems with known structure (i.e., with and without guild structure, with varying degrees of resource partitioning, with and without "core" resources). Proportional utilization coefficients, p_i, are positively correlated with the abundance of resources, whereas electivities, e_i, correlate negatively with resource abundance. The geometric mean of p_i and e_i, termed g_i is a superior measure of utilization, more nearly independent of biases associated with resource availability than either of its components, and performs better in bench tests. Organization in observed patterns of resource utilization by four desert lizard and four tropical freshwater fish assemblages is critically evaluated via comparisons with results from two randomization algorithms. Randomizations follow a Monte Carlo technique whereby the …