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Observation-level random effects

Dear Shahin. I have attempted to fit the "animal model" for "development", treating each observation as a single offspring, with egg and Tank as fixed effects (Tanks has 5 levels), and Cross as a RE. (These data are odd, with development falling on just 26 values, and Tank 5 has  20 obs at 895.3, and 2 x 901.1!). This was done in a couple of non-R genetics oriented LMM packages, incl Wombat (Karin Meyers' AI-REML package). This model still does not converge, but roughly Cross is 3/4 of the variance, and additive genetic ~1/4, with residual variance small (driven by repeated parents). You will have to seek local statistical advice re priors for a Bayesian model in, say, MCMCglmm, or augment your data with other datasets for this organism.