[R-sig-ME] Error message

[Luciano La Sala]

Hello,

A few years back I used to fit GLMM (binomial response) using lmer function in lme4. Back then I had to specify the family of response variable  (dead /alive)
as binomial. Now I have to refit those models using quite newer versions of both R (R x64 3.1.1) and lme4 (lme4_1.1-7), but things seem to have changed quite a bit.
  
My response variable is death (yes/no), and independent variables are Year (2006 / 2007), Sex (M / F), Egg volume (continuous), and Hatching Order (ordered factor variable, namely
first, second, third). I need to control autocorrelation among siblings, so I use "Nest ID" to fit random intercepts for different nests.

My model is:

model.1 <- lmer(Death_2 ~ Year + Sex + Egg_Volume + Hatch_Order + (1|Nest_ID), family = binomial, data = Data)
summary(model.1)

But I get the error and warning messages below:

Error in eval(expr, envir, enclos) :
   (maxstephalfit) PIRLS step-halvings failed to reduce deviance in pwrssUpdate
In addition:Warning message:
In lmer(Death_2 ~ Year + Sex + Egg_Volume + Hatch_Order + (1 | Nest_ID),  :
   calling lmer with 'family' is deprecated; please use glmer() instead

  
Question: how can I circumvent these two issues?

Thanks in advance.

Luciano


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