[R-sig-ME] extracting variance components in lme4?

[Jerome Goudet]

I was wondering whether anyone knew of a quick way to extract variance 
component from an lmer (or lmer2) model.  I have a random effect nested 
design (with fact2 nested in fact1) that I call as follow

model1<-lmer(resp~1+(1|fact1)+(1|fact2),data=data)

I can obtain the variance components from VarCorr (actually, the 
variance components of fact1 and fact2 only, and the standard deviation 
of the residuals):

vc<-VarCorr(model1)

but then, I can't extract the variance components and store them in a 
simple R object (I could with lme of package nlme).  I need to do that 
for further processing.

Any clues on how I could do it )


Many thanks in advance.

-- 
Jérôme GOUDET
Dep. Ecology & Evolution
Biophore, UNIL-Sorge
UNIL-CH-1015 Lausanne
Switzerland
http://www.unil.ch/dee
http://www.unil.ch/popgen
Tel: +41 21 692 42 42    Fax: +41 21 692 42 65
Secr:+41 21 692 42 60
jerome.goudet-at-unil.ch