
Dear All,
I need help both with analytical and computational aspects.

My problem: I have counted and measured increments on otoliths (inner-ear bony 
structures) of fish larvae collected at different times of day. This was 
repeated three times for each fish larvae (in random order and no particular 
dates). Then, I calculated the ratio of marginal-to-previous increment for each 
fish and reading. I wish to study if differences exist in ratios between hours 
of day (accounting for differences in readings within each fish) - in 
data.frame format... 

code   hour   read.no   ratio
33001  5      1         0.56
33003  7      1         0.93
37123  19     1         0.23
...
33001  5      2         0.62
33003  7      2         0.87
37123  19     2         0.22
...
37123  19     3         0.26
...

My solution: Use function lme, with hr<-factor(hour)...

> hr.lme<-lme(sqrt(ratio)~hr,random=~1|code/read.no)
> anova(hr.lme) ; summary (hr.lme)

Does this commands correspond to the initial problem statement? 

Thanks in advance.
Regards, Eduardo Esteves


