On comparison of relative growth rates under different environmental conditions with application to biological data

Article Type

Research Article

Publication Title

Metron

Abstract

In this paper, we discuss a few empirical estimates of relative growth rate and their distributions based on two well-established parametric structures of the size variable- normal and log-normal with different growth curve models as the mean process. We discuss some exact and asymptotic testing procedures applicable to test the equality of expected relative growth rates over two or more different environmental situations, e.g. distinct geographical locations, several biological species, etc. Along with the tests under the parametric structures for the size variable, we consider some nonparametric tests as well. We perform tests for two other important hypotheses - whether the times taken to reach the maximum values of the relative growth rates are equal for all environments and whether those maximum values are equal. We illustrate our methods with two real life examples. The performances of the various testing procedures are studied by means of their power functions. Our methods have immense practical value in growth rate modeling in the biological context.

First Page

311

Last Page

337

DOI

10.1007/s40300-016-0102-y

Publication Date

12-1-2016

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