exactLTRE:An Exact Method for Life Table Response Experiment (LTRE)
Analysis
Life Table Response Experiments (LTREs) are a method of comparative demographic analysis. The purpose is to quantify
how the difference or variance in vital rates (stage-specific
survival, growth, and fertility) among populations contributes
to difference or variance in the population growth rate,
"lambda." We provide functions for one-way fixed design and
random design LTRE, using either the classical methods that
have been in use for several decades, or an fANOVA-based exact
method that directly calculates the impact on lambda of changes
in matrix elements, for matrix elements and their interactions.
The equations and descriptions for the classical methods of
LTRE analysis can be found in "Matrix Population Models:
Construction, Analysis, and Interpretation (2nd edition)"
Caswell (2001, ISBN: 0878930965), and the fANOVA-based exact
methods will be published in a forthcoming paper. We also
provide some demographic functions, including generation time
from Bienvenu and Legendre (2015) <doi:10.1086/681104>. For
implementation of exactLTRE where all possible interactions are
calculated, we use an operator matrix presented in Poelwijk,
Krishna, and Ranganathan (2016)
<doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004771>.
