[R-sig-eco] Functional response using frair package

[Daniel Pritchard]

Hi Luis,

"Functional Response Analysis" is, at it's core, just non-linear curve fitting. So any book or manuscript that helps you along this path will help. Personally, I found Ritz and Streibig (2008) and then recently Bolker et al (2013) quite helpful, but there are many other resources out there. 

When undertaking FR analyses specifically, just about any methods for analysing, plotting and interpreting non-linear curves will work, but Juliano (2001) and Bolker (2008) give some good FR-specific advice.  

The purpose of FRAIR, such as it is, was to make fitting this specific group of non-linear curves just a little bit easier. It provides nice wrappers for common curve fits and some simple (though somewhat naive) plotting and comparison methods. 

We hoped that by making this easier we might address some common errors we saw in some FR analyses (especially regarding bootstrapping of these curves) but, yes, I agree a nice vignette would be more helpful.  

People on this list might have some advice (either about FR curves specifically, or non-linear curve fitting generally). If you have any specific questions about FRAIR, please don't hesitate to contact me off list.  

Regards,
Dan

Bolker, BM (2008) Ecological Models and Data in R. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.   
Bolker BM and others (2013) Strategies for fitting nonlinear ecological models in R, AD Model Builder, and BUGS. Methods in Ecology and Evolution 4: 501-512.  
Juliano SA (2001) Nonlinear curve fitting: Predation and functional response curves. In: Scheiner SM, Gurevitch J (eds). Design and analysis of ecological experiments. Oxford University Press  
Ritz, C. and Streibig, J. C.  2008.  Nonlinear Regression with R.  Springer Science    
Trexler, J. C., McCulloch, C. E., and Travis, J.  1988.  How can the functional reponse best be determined Oecologia, 76: 206-214.    

Daniel Pritchard  
daniel at pritchard.co  

> Message: 1
> Date: Wed, 13 May 2015 04:39:40 -0300
> From: Luis Fernando Garc?a <luysgarcia at gmail.com>
> To: "r-sig-ecology at r-project.org" <r-sig-ecology at r-project.org>
> Subject: [R-sig-eco] Functional response using frair package
> Message-ID:
> 	<CANxP2S6MqqgpOHL3LysbvkYvMyGp_D9WagSbHwTvXf-erRGppw at mail.gmail.com>
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> 
> Dear R friends,}
> 
> I am trying to perform a functional response analysis in R. I have not
> found lot of packages except for the frair package(
> http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/frair/frair.pdf). Some of the
> exercises in the manual are not so simple, so I wanted to know if any of
> you know this package and could suggest me some references to use in order
> to start,
> 
> Thanks a lot!!