devRate {devRate}

devRate: A package to quantify the relationship between development rate and temperature in ectotherms.

Description

The devRate package allows quantifying the relationship between development rate and temperature in ectotherm organisms.

Citation

Please use citation("devRate") to cite the devRate package and/or Rebaudo F, Struelens Q, Dangles O. Modelling temperature-dependent development rate and phenology in arthropods: The devRate package for r. Methods Ecol Evol. 2017;00:1-7. https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.12935.

Author's affiliation: UMR EGCE, Univ. ParisSud, CNRS, IRD, Univ. ParisSaclay, Gif-sur-Yvette, France

Overview

The devRate package provides three categories of functions:

- to find development rate information about a specific organism (Order, Family, Genus, species): which equations were used and what are the associated parameters (e.g., helpful to estimate starting values for your empirical data sets);

- to relate development rate and temperature; and

- to plot your empirical datasets and the associated fitted model, and/or to plot development curves from the literature.

Usage

You can use the package:

- to get development rate curves as a function of temperature for a specific organism (hundred of examples from the literature are included in the package);

- to know which equations exists and which are most used in the literature; and

- to relate development rate with temperature from your empirical data, using the equations from the package database.

Installation instructions

install.packages("devRate")

Documentation

The package includes two vignettes (long-form documentation):

- quickUserGuide: Using devRate package to fit development rate models to an empirical dataset

- modelEvaluation: Model evaluation using Shi et al. 2016 study