Stepwise selection of predictors was visually enhanced and provides now the support for protection against Type I error inflation (preliminary test with all predictors and the adjustment of p values by one of three methods). Canoco 5 can also compute the false discovery rate.
Stepwise selection of explanatory variables is a popular method how to sort-out results of exploratory field studies and Canoco 5 improves this procedure beyond the preceding versions by protecting users from most of the faults of stepwise selection from a large pool of predictors.