title: Estimating monotonic rates from biological data using local linear regression.
abstract: Accessing many fundamental questions in biology begins with empirical estimation of simple monotonic rates of underlying biological processes. Across a variety of disciplines, ranging from physiology to biogeochemistry, these rates are routinely estimated from non-linear and noisy time series data using linear regression andad hocmanual truncation of non-linearities. Here, we introduce the R package LoLinR, a flexible toolkit to implement local linear regression techniques to objectively and reproducibly estimate monotonic biological rates from non-linear time series data, and demonstrate possible applications using metabolic rate data. LoLinR provides methods to easily and reliably estimate monotonic rates from time series data in a way that is statistically robust, facilitates reproducible research and is applicable to a wide variety of research disciplines in the biological sciences.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Geometric Biology, School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Clayton, VIC 3800, Australia colin.olito@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Colin
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-6883-0367
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Olito
authors.affiliation: Centre for Geometric Biology, School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Clayton, VIC 3800, Australia.
authors.forename: Craig R
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-0200-2187
authors.initials: CR
authors.lastname: White
authors.affiliation: Centre for Geometric Biology, School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Clayton, VIC 3800, Australia.
authors.forename: Dustin J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Marshall
authors.affiliation: Centre for Geometric Biology, School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Clayton, VIC 3800, Australia.
authors.forename: Diego R
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-4568-2362
authors.initials: DR
authors.lastname: Barneche
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D000818:Animals; D001481:Basal Metabolism; D001717:Birds / Q000378:metabolism*; D002013:Bryozoa / Q000378:metabolism*; D003198:Computer Simulation; D007700:Kinetics; D007814:Larva / Q000378:metabolism; D016014:Linear Models; D008954:Models, Biological; D010101:Oxygen Consumption; D012984:Software
keywords: Autocorrelation; Biological rates; Linearity; Local linear regression; Reproducible research; Time series