inspect {respR}R Documentation

Explore and visualise respirometry data and check for common errors

Description

inspect() is a data exploration and preparation function that visualises respirometry data and checks it for errors that may affect the use of further functions in respR. It also subsets specified columns into a new list object that can be used in subsequent functions, reducing the need for additional inputs. Note, use of inspect to prepare data for the subsequent functions is optional. Functions in respR can accept regular R data objects including data frames, data tables, tibbles, vectors, etc. It is a quality control and exploratory step to help users view and prepare their data prior to analysis.

Usage

inspect(
  x,
  time = NULL,
  oxygen = NULL,
  width = 0.1,
  plot = TRUE,
  add.data = NULL,
  ...
)

Arguments

x

data.frame. Any object of class data.frame (incl. data.table, tibble, etc.). Should contain paired numeric values of time and oxygen.

time

integer or string. Defaults to 1. Specifies the column of the Time data as either a column number or the name.

oxygen

integer or string, or vector of either. Defaults to 2. Specifies the column(s) of the Oxygen data as either a vector of column numbers or names.

width

numeric, 0.01 to 1. Defaults to 0.1. Width used in the rolling regression plot as proportion of total length of data.

plot

logical. Defaults to TRUE. Plots the data. If time and single oxygen columns selected, plots timeseries data, plus plot of rolling rate. If multiple oxygen columns, plots all timeseries data only.

add.data

integer or string. Defaults to NULL. Specifies the column number or name of an optional additional data source that will be plotted in blue alongside the full oxygen timeseries.

...

Allows additional plotting controls to be passed, such as legend = FALSE, quiet = TRUE, rate.rev = FALSE and pos. A different width can also be passed in plot() commands on output objects.

Details

Given an input data frame, x, the function scans the specified time and oxygen columns for the following issues. Columns are specified by using the column number (e.g. time = 1), or by name (e.g. time = "Time.Hrs"). If time and oxygen are left NULL the default of ⁠time = 1, oxygen = 2⁠ is applied.

Check for numeric data

respR requires data be in the form of paired values of numeric time and oxygen. All columns are checked that they contain numeric data before any other checks are performed. If any of the inspected columns do not contain numeric data the remaining checks for that column are skipped, and the function exits returning NULL, printing the summary of the checks. No plot is produced. Only when all inspected columns pass this numeric check can the resulting output object be saved and passed to other respR functions.

Other checks

The time column is checked for missing (NA/NaN) values, positive and negative infinite values (Inf/-Inf), that values are sequential, that there are no duplicate times, and that it is numerically evenly-spaced. Oxygen columns are checked for missing (NA/NaN) and infinite values (Inf/-Inf). See Failed Checks section for what it means for analyses if these checks result in warnings. If the output is assigned, the specified time and oxygen columns are extracted and saved to a list object for use in later functions such as calc_rate() and auto_rate(). A plot is also produced.

Plot

If plot = TRUE (the default), a plot of the oxygen timeseries is produced in the upper panel. In addition, a rolling regression plot in the lower panel shows the rate of change in oxygen across a rolling window specified using the width operator (default is width = 0.1, or 10% of the entire dataset). This plot provides a quick visual inspection of how the rate varies over the course of the experiment. Regions of stable and consistent rates can be identified on this plot as flat or level areas. This plot is for exploratory purposes only; later functions allow rate to be calculated over specific regions. Each individual rate value is plotted against the centre of the time window used to calculate it.

Note: Since respR is primarily used to examine oxygen consumption, the oxygen rate plot is by default plotted on a reverse y-axis. In respR oxygen uptake rates are negative since they represent a negative slope of oxygen against time. In these plots the axis is reversed so that higher uptake rates (i.e. more negative) will be higher on these plots. If you are interested instead in oxygen production rates, which are positive, the rate.rev = FALSE input can be passed in either the inspect call, or when using plot() on the output object. In this case, the rate values will be plotted numerically, and higher oxygen production rates will be higher on the plot.

Plot an additional data source

Using the add.data input an additional data source, for example temperature, can be plotted alongside the oxygen timeseries. This should be either a column number (e.g. add.data = 3) or name (e.g. add.data = "Temperature") indicating a column in the input x data frame sharing the same time data. None of the data checks are performed on this column; it is simply to give a basic visual aid in the plot to, for example, help decide if regions of the data should be used or not used because this parameter was variable. Values are saved in the output as a vector under ⁠$add.data⁠. It is plotted in blue on a separate y-axis on the main timeseries plot. It is not plotted if multiple oxygen columns are inspected. See examples.

Additional plotting options

A different width value can be passed to see how it affects estimation of the rolling rate. If axis labels obscure parts of the plot they can be suppressed using legend = FALSE. Suppress console output messages with quiet = TRUE. If multiple columns have been inspected, the pos input can be used to examine each time~oxygen dataset. If axis labels (particularly y-axis) are difficult to read, las = 2 can be passed to make axis labels horizontal, and oma (outer margins, default oma = c(0.4, 1, 1.5, 0.4)) or mai (inner margins, default mai = c(0.3, 0.15, 0.35, 0.15)) can be used to adjust plot margins. See examples.

Multiple Columns of Oxygen Data

For a quick overview of larger datasets, multiple oxygen columns can be inspected for errors and plotted by using the oxygen input to select multiple columns. These must share the same time column. In this case, data checks are performed, with a plot of each oxygen time series, but no rolling rate plot is produced. All data are plotted on the same axis range of both time and oxygen (total range of data). This is chiefly exploratory functionality to allow for a quick overview of a dataset, and it should be noted that while the output inspect object will contain all columns in its ⁠$dataframe⁠ element, subsequent functions in respR (calc_rate, auto_rate, etc.) will by default only use the first two columns (time, and the first specified oxygen column). To analyse multiple columns and determine rates, best practice is to inspect and assign each time-oxygen column pair as separate inspect objects. See Examples.

Flowthrough Respirometry Data

For flowthrough respirometry data, see the specialised inspect.ft() function.

Failed Checks

The most important data check in inspect is that all data columns are numeric. If any column fails this check, the function skips the remaining checks for that column, the function exits returning NULL, and no output object or plot is produced.

The other failed check that requires action is the check for infinite values (Inf/-Inf). Some oxygen sensing systems add these in error when interference or data dropouts occur. Infinite values will cause problems when it comes to calculating rates, so need to be removed. If found, locations of these are printed and can be found in the output object under ⁠$locs⁠. Note, these values are not plotted, so special note should be taken of the warnings and console printout.

The remaining data checks in inspect are mainly exploratory and help diagnose and flag potential issues with the data that might affect rate calculations. For instance, long experiments may have had sensor dropouts the user is unaware of. Some might not be major issues. For instance, an uneven time warning can result from using decimalised minutes, which is a completely valid time metric, but happens to be numerically unevenly spaced. As an additional check, if uneven time is found, the minimum and maximum intervals in the time data are in the console output, so a user can see immediately if there are large gaps in the data.

If some of these checks produce warnings, it should generally not hinder analysis of the data. respR has been coded to rely on linear regressions on exact data values, and not make assumptions about data spacing or order. Therefore issues such as missing or NA/NaN values, duplicate or non-sequential time values, or uneven time spacing should not cause any erroneous rate results, as long as they do not occur over large regions of the data. inspect however outputs locations (row numbers) of where these issues occur (located in the ⁠$locs⁠ element of the output), allowing users to amend them before analysis. We would strongly recommend that to be completely confident in any results from analysis of such data, and avoid obscure errors, these issues be addressed before proceeding.

S3 Generic Functions

Saved output objects can be used in the generic S3 functions plot(), print() and summary().

More

For additional help, documentation, vignettes, and more visit the respR website at https://januarharianto.github.io/respR/

Value

Output is a list object of class inspect, with a ⁠$dataframe⁠ containing the specified time and oxygen columns, inputs, and metadata which can be passed to calc_rate() or auto_rate() to determine rates. If there are failed checks or warnings, the row locations of the potentially problematic data can be found in ⁠$locs⁠.

Examples


## By default, assumes time is col 1 and oxygen col2:
inspect(sardine.rd)

## Instead, specify time and oxygen columns as either number or name
inspect(sardine.rd, time = 1, oxygen = 2)
inspect(urchins.rd, time = "time.min", oxygen = "a")

## Use add.data input to plot an additional data type
## (this column is not checked)
inspect(sardine.rd, time = 1, oxygen = 2, add.data = 3)

## Adjust the width of the rolling rate plot:
inspect(sardine.rd, 1, 2, width = 0.2)

## Inspect specific columns in multicolumn datasets:
inspect(urchins.rd, time = 1, oxygen = 4)

## Inspect multiple columns for a quick overview
## of a large dataset:
inspect(urchins.rd, time = 1, oxygen = c(11:19))

## Inspect oxygen production data, use a width that gives
## a better rolling rate, and use extra plotting options to
## suppress legend, and ensure rates are plotted not reversed:
inspect(algae.rd, time = 1, oxygen = 2, width = 0.4,
        legend = FALSE, rate.rev = FALSE)

## Pass additional plotting inputs to override defaults and
## allow better y-axis label visibility
inspect(sardine.rd, time = 1, oxygen = 2,
        las = 1, mai = c(0.3, 0.35, 0.35, 0.15))


[Package respR version 2.3.3 Index]