This is correct.  The function, trajectory.analysis, compares multi-point 
trajectories; therefore, age would need to be modeled as a categorical variable 
(factor).  If one wishes to have age (or similar variable) in the model as a 
continuous variable, then advanced.procD.lm would be more appropriate.  This 
function allows comparisons of slopes among groups.  The two functions are 
similar, in that they allow evaluation of the length and direction of group 
trajectories, although the trajectories in advancad.procD.lm are vectors.  One 
can consider non-linear trajectories in trajectory.analysis.

Hope that helps!

Michael Collyer

Associate Professor
Biostatistics
Department of Biology
Western Kentucky University
1906 College Heights Blvd. #11080
Bowling Green, KY 42101-1080
Phone: 270-745-8765; Fax: 270-745-6856
Email: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>

On Aug 24, 2015, at 12:11 AM, lv xiao 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:

In the botton line of page 53 of Quick Guide to Geomorph v2.1.6 regarding 
trajectory.analysis (Y ~ cov + A * B), A and B are called "factors", which 
seems to suggest that A and B are categorical variables. Continuous covariates 
could be included in the formula, but this is only optional. In contrast, it 
seems that there must be two categorical variables (A and B) appearing in the 
formula.

Following this line of thought, I am wondering if is there the need to convert 
the continuous age variable (age) into a categorical variable (age_cat) before 
applying the trajectory analysis. I am not sure whether one should use 
trajectory.analysis(shape ~ group * age_cat ) or trajectory.analysis(shape ~ 
group * age).

Best regards,
Patrick

On Monday, 24 August 2015 10:56:55 UTC+8, Emma Sherratt wrote:
Dear Miranda,

Using procD.lm is the correct function for what you want to do. Since you have 
just two groups it's a simple Procrustes Anova. Your implementation should be:

procD.lm(shape~ age*group)

This will give you:

Effect of age; where significant means the shape scales allometrically

Effect of group; where significant means the groups differ in intercept

The interaction term of age and group to tell you if the two groups have the 
same slope (interaction term not significant) or the slopes differ (sig 
interaction term)

Then from this you will be able to deduce whether the two groups follow the 
same allometric trajectory or not. But remember, you are dealing with 
multivariate regression here so there is no positive or negative allometry, 
since the "slope" is a multivariate vector in shape space.

The same formula into trajectory.analysis should then lead you to where you 
were hoping to go with that.

Emma

On Monday, August 24, 2015, Karban, Miranda E 
<[email protected]<http://uiowa.edu/>> wrote:
Hello morphometricians,
I am relatively new to morphometrics, and I am attempting to assess ontogenetic 
trajectories from a longitudinal sample of growth study x-rays. My subjects are 
divided into 2 groups, and I would like to determine whether there are 
developmental differences in cranial shape between these groups. I have precise 
ages for each subject, so I hope to use age as a variable (following McNulty et 
al., 2006) rather than centroid size.

>From what I gather from the literature, I can estimate ontogenetic 
>trajectories by regressing the Procrustes aligned shape coordinates onto the 
>independent variable of age. So far, I have attempted to do this in the 
>geomorph package in R using the procD.lm and the trajectory.analysis 
>functions. I am wondering if I am doing this correctly, or if there is a 
>better function to use.

I have tried the following:
lateral.gpa <- gpagen(vaultlandmarks)
procD.lm(two.d.array(lateral.gpa$coords) ~ age, iter = 999)

where “vaultlandmarks” refers to the 2D landmark and semi-landmark coordinates 
in my tps file, and “age” refers to a column in my metadata csv file which 
gives the age of each specimen to the nearest 1/10 of a year. This provides a 
sum-of-squared Procrustes distances, a mean square, and a highly significant 
p-value. I am not sure, however, how to compare the results I get from the 2 
groups.

When I try the trajectory.analysis function:
lateral.gpa <- two.d.array(gpagen(vaultlandmarks)$coords)
trajectory.analysis(lateral.gpa~age)

I get the error message: “Error in trajectory.analysis(lateral.gpa ~ age) :   
X-matrix does not specify enough model factors (see help file).”

Thank you for any advice or help you might provide.

Best,
Miranda Karban
PhD Candidate, University of Iowa

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Zoology Division, School of Environmental and Rural Science,
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Armidale, NSW, Australia, 2351
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