[R-sig-ME] mixed model?

Ben Bolker bbolker at gmail.com
Wed May 3 00:19:27 CEST 2017


  It's a little difficult.
  Unless you have very large sample sizes per year or very small noise
levels, it's quite likely that lme4 and friends will collapse the
among-year variance to zero in this case, which may be anticonservative.
 You have a variety of choices, none of them super-easy or universally
appropriate:

 - collect more data (hah!)
 - fit year as a fixed effect
 - fit year as a random effect and accept the risk of getting a
completely pooled model
 - use some form of regularization to push the variance away from zero
(e.g., blmer)
 - go completely Bayesian/MCMC, e.g. brms/MCMCglmm (you'll probably
still need an informative prior to get the model to converge)

  Someone has also pointed to the GLMM FAQ.

On 17-05-02 01:56 PM, Joaquín Aldabe wrote:
> Thanks Ben. In this case I considered grass height as continuous. Is it
> fine to consider year as random effect with only 4 years?
> Best, 
> Joaquín
> 
> 2017-05-02 14:49 GMT-03:00 Ben Bolker <bbolker at gmail.com
> <mailto:bbolker at gmail.com>>:
> 
>     Minor correction: if GrassHeight is a continuous variable then you
>     need (GrassHeight|Field) to model the among-Field variation in the
>     effect of grass height.  If GrassHeight is categorical, then
>     (GrassHeight|Field) will also work, but it will fit an unstructured
>     variance-covariance model (n*(n+1)/2 parameters for an n-level
>     categorical predictor), whereas (1|Field/GrassHeight) would fit a
>     (positive) compound-symmetric model for the variation in grass height
>     effects among fields (2 parameters instead of n*(n+1)/2)
> 
>     On Tue, May 2, 2017 at 1:36 PM, Joaquín Aldabe
>     <joaquin.aldabe at gmail.com <mailto:joaquin.aldabe at gmail.com>> wrote:
>     > Thankyou very much Evan. I´ll try that!
>     > Cheers,
>     > Joaquín.
>     >
>     > 2017-05-02 14:17 GMT-03:00 Evan Palmer-Young <ecp52 at cornell.edu
>     <mailto:ecp52 at cornell.edu>>:
>     >
>     >> Joaquin,
>     >> It looks like you could use Year and Field as random effects,
>     since there
>     >> might be variation in bird abundance across years, and similarly,
>     variation
>     >> across fields.
>     >>
>     >> So in this case your model is
>     >> Birdmodel<- glmer(Presence~ GrassHeight * ForestCover + (1|Year) +
>     >> (1|Field), data=BirdData, family =                  "binomial")
>     >>
>     >> Alternatively you could use Year as a fixed effect, if you are
>     interested
>     >> in particular years.
>     >> Another option is to include interaction terms as random effects, eg
>     >> (1|Field:GrassHeight), to allow the effect of GrassHeight to vary
>     across
>     >> fields.
>     >>
>     >>
>     >> On Fri, Apr 28, 2017 at 9:32 AM, Joaquín Aldabe
>     <joaquin.aldabe at gmail.com <mailto:joaquin.aldabe at gmail.com>>
>     >> wrote:
>     >>
>     >>> Dear all, I'm analysing bird presence/absence in 16 grassland
>     fields over
>     >>> 4
>     >>> seasons (different years) and want to know the effect of grass
>     height and
>     >>> forest cover on presence/absence of the species. Grass height
>     varied among
>     >>> season but not forest cover in each field. So we have a spatial
>     dimension
>     >>> and a time dimension. I tried a binomial glm but wonder if I
>     should use
>     >>> generalized linear mixed models with field identity as the
>     random as I
>     >>> have
>     >>> repeated measures (bird counts) in each field.
>     >>>
>     >>> I appreciate your opinion.
>     >>>
>     >>> Thanks in advanced,
>     >>>
>     >>> Joaquin Aldabe.
>     >>>
>     >>> --
>     >>> *Joaquín Aldabe*
>     >>>
>     >>> *Grupo Biodiversidad, Ambiente y Sociedad*
>     >>> Centro Universitario de la Región Este, Universidad de la República
>     >>> Ruta 15 (y Ruta 9), Km 28.500, Departamento de Rocha
>     >>>
>     >>> *Departamento de Conservación*
>     >>> Aves Uruguay
>     >>> BirdLife International
>     >>> Canelones 1164, Montevideo
>     >>>
>     >>> https://sites.google.com/site/joaquin.aldabe
>     <https://sites.google.com/site/joaquin.aldabe>
>     >>> <https://sites.google.com/site/perfilprofesionaljoaquinaldabe
>     <https://sites.google.com/site/perfilprofesionaljoaquinaldabe>>
>     >>>
>     >>>         [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>     >>>
>     >>> _______________________________________________
>     >>> R-sig-mixed-models at r-project.org
>     <mailto:R-sig-mixed-models at r-project.org> mailing list
>     >>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-mixed-models
>     <https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-mixed-models>
>     >>
>     >>
>     >>
>     >>
>     >> --
>     >> Evan Palmer-Young
>     >> PhD candidate
>     >> Department of Biology
>     >> 221 Morrill Science Center
>     >> 611 North Pleasant St
>     >> Amherst MA 01003
>     >> https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=VGvOypoAAAAJ&hl=en
>     <https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=VGvOypoAAAAJ&hl=en>
>     >> https://sites.google.com/a/cornell.edu/evan-palmer-young/
>     <https://sites.google.com/a/cornell.edu/evan-palmer-young/>
>     >> epalmery at cns.umass.edu <mailto:epalmery at cns.umass.edu>
>     >> ecp52 at cornell.edu <mailto:ecp52 at cornell.edu>
>     >>
>     >
>     >
>     >
>     > --
>     > *Joaquín Aldabe*
>     >
>     > *Grupo Biodiversidad, Ambiente y Sociedad*
>     > Centro Universitario de la Región Este, Universidad de la República
>     > Ruta 15 (y Ruta 9), Km 28.500, Departamento de Rocha
>     >
>     > *Departamento de Conservación*
>     > Aves Uruguay
>     > BirdLife International
>     > Canelones 1164, Montevideo
>     >
>     > https://sites.google.com/site/joaquin.aldabe
>     <https://sites.google.com/site/joaquin.aldabe>
>     > <https://sites.google.com/site/perfilprofesionaljoaquinaldabe
>     <https://sites.google.com/site/perfilprofesionaljoaquinaldabe>>
>     >
>     >         [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>     >
>     > _______________________________________________
>     > R-sig-mixed-models at r-project.org
>     <mailto:R-sig-mixed-models at r-project.org> mailing list
>     > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-mixed-models
>     <https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-mixed-models>
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> *Joaquín Aldabe*
> 
> /Grupo Biodiversidad, Ambiente y Sociedad/
> Centro Universitario de la Región Este, Universidad de la República
> Ruta 15 (y Ruta 9), Km 28.500, Departamento de Rocha  
>                                                            
> /Departamento de Conservación/
> Aves Uruguay
> BirdLife International
> Canelones 1164, Montevideo
> 
> https://sites.google.com/site/joaquin.aldabe
> <https://sites.google.com/site/perfilprofesionaljoaquinaldabe>
> 
> 
>



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