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MCMCglmm Prior for a Binary Trait with a Random Interaction w/ "animal"

Hi,

You have specified rcov=~us(treatment):units but any one observation can only be associated with one treatment, so the covariance can?t be estimated. Since the residual variance is also non-identifiable in binary models, you should use the default ~units.

Jarrod
On 7 Mar 2020, at 22:39, Cameron So <cameron.so at mail.utoronto.ca<mailto:cameron.so at mail.utoronto.ca>> wrote:
Hi,

Just to follow up on my original question. I've constructed (hopefully appropriate) priors for my multivariate models (binary-binary, binary-gaussian, etc).. However I am receiving error messages after my models have run.

Could anyone suggest on any possible solutions?

I am receiving these errors to my code below:

 1.  In MCMCglmm ... all observations are missing for error term 1 gaussian: liabilities sampled from Norm(0,1)
 2.  In MCMCglmm ... all observations are missing for error term 2 gaussian: liabilities sampled from Norm(0,1)
 3.  Some fixed effects not estimable and have been removed. Use singular.ok=TRUE to sample these effects.

plastic.survival <- total.2019
prior1.1 <- list(R = list(V = diag(2), nu = 2, fix = 1),
                G = list(G1 = list(V = diag(2), nu = 15, alpha.mu = c(0,0), alpha.V = diag(c(1.25, 1.25))),
                         G2 = list(V = diag(2), nu = 15, alpha.mu = c(0,0), alpha.V = diag(c(1.25, 1.25)))))

PL_model1.1 <- MCMCglmm(flower ~ treatment + plot - 1, random = ~us(treatment):animal + us(treatment):matID,
                       ginverse = list(animal = Ainv), rcov = ~us(treatment):units,
                       family = "threshold", data = plastic.survival, prior = prior1.1, #Bernoulli distribution
                       nitt = 2100000, thin = 1000, burnin = 100000, verbose = T, pr = TRUE, trunc = TRUE)
..

On the other note.. I am also considering on moving to the package 'brms' in the near future since the syntax follows the commonly used lme4, and it seems more flexible to various distributions and multi-level experimental designs. Just wondering also if anyone has attempted constructing priors in this package for quantitative genetic models.



______

Cameron So

Masters Student | Plant Evolutionary Responses to Climate Change | Weis Lab
Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
University of Toronto
ESC2083, St. George Campus