What you describe – samples from multiple populations – is best considered as a 
random effect in a typical generalized linear model format.  You have randomly 
sampled some populations from all of those that might be available.  If I 
understand your data correctly, to evaluate allometry, use a mixed model 
approach where some trait measurement is the response variable and some measure 
of body size would be the predictor variable, then population would be included 
as a random effect in the model.  This structure has the advantage of 
accounting for and adjusting for covariation among populations before the fixed 
effect is evaluated.  Appropriately crafted mixed models can rigorously account 
for a range of complicated covariance structures within the context of one 
model.  Several examples of the use of mixed models in ecology and evolution 
can be found in the literature.
Hope that helps,

Mark

Mark C. Belk, Professor of Biology
Brigham Young University
Editor, Western North American Naturalist
801-422-4154

From: Ariadne Schulz [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Wednesday, January 18, 2017 1:27 PM
To: Elahe
Cc: MORPHMET
Subject: Re: [MORPHMET] eliminating the effect of population differences

I would like to hear any responses to this as well. I did something similar and 
I wasn't sure how to approach this question. In future studies I would like to 
address precisely this issue. My inclination would be that first you would want 
to determine how much morphological variation you're getting between sites. You 
could then look at sexual dimorphism within each site and/or you could look at 
variation of only females and only males over all sites. But this is all rather 
clunky and does not eliminate any interpopulation variation. If anyone has 
already proposed or can propose a better methodology I'd be interested in it as 
well.
Best,
Ari

On Wed, Jan 18, 2017 at 5:29 PM, Elahe 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Dear all,

I have pooled samples from 7 different populations of one species in order to 
study the allometric growth and sexual dimorphism in that species. As different 
populations may have subtle differences in terms of body dimensions with each 
other, I want to remove their effects.
Can anyone suggest a way to eliminate population effects and maybe finding some 
residuals that are homogeneous and can be used for further analyses?

I would appreciate any helps :)
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