Modeling multi-site individual corals growth

2016 
Monitoring corals growth trends via individual demographic variablesrepresents, for marine biologists, a crucial issue for assessing corals population status.The von Bertalanffy function (VBGF) is widely used by non-statisticians for predicting the growth of several marine organisms. Nevertheless, parameter estimation of this model requires linearization techniques which neglect environmental factors influence and potential variability in corals colonies. In order to overcome these limitations, a more thorough approach based on a hierarchical non-linear mixed effects model is proposed. Two model specifications, respectively based onthe standard and a new VBGF parameterizations, are evaluated using data of the solitary Mediterranean coral, L. pruvoti .
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