Dear list,

I thank you all for your responses, particularly Drew, Antoine, David and Timothy. I am still wotrking with all your suggestions and hope to make some progress with my multiple response variables. I will surely let you know how it worked out.

 However, I still need some assistance as follows:

I have sampled birds from 2 main landscapes, Agricultural and minining areas.

32 sites in located in 16 remnant forest patches

16sites at edge and i6 interior

patches are selected such that the adjacent matrix is either agricultural or an active mine site.

in each site, bird surveys were conducted for a period of 1yrs.

vegetation characteistics and microclimates were messured as covaiates.

With lme4, is the below grouping of site and patch ok??

Because sites were coded 1/2 for edge/interior,matrix also same, can I also group by matrix??

In the model below, can I consider put a fixed variable in my model aslso a random? because I was thinking I could group by matrix as well but knowing very well that matrix has a significant negative influence during data exploration.



m<-lmer(spst~(1|site)+(1|patch)+mtx+elev+psize+X1fr+logyr...........,family = poisson, data=var32)

I need to know if my variable definitions are clear>

thanks



Deikumah Justus
PhD Candidate (Confirmed) - Landscape Ecology & Conservation
Landscape Ecology and Conservation Group
School of Geography, Planning and Environmental Management
The University of Queensland
Brisbane Qld 4072
Australia

Chamberlain Building (35)
Campbell Rd - St Lucia Campus

W: http://www.gpem.uq.edu.au/cser-jdeikumah
E: j.deikumah2@uq.edu.au
M: +61 424481796, +61 479094200
If you don't like something, Change it. If you can't change it, change your Attitude. DON'T COMPLAIN (Maya Angelou)

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