hmde: Hierarchical Methods for Differential Equations

AbstractRepeat observations of size are a common tool for understanding growth across taxa, and are used to estimate parameters for functions that describe growth rates. Recent advances in estimating differential equation parameters with a hierarchical longitudinal model have gone beyond available software. Custom implementation of such models is a barrier to use particularly for people who are not familiar with statistical programming. We introduce a new R package implementing a hierarchical Bayesian longitudinal model for repeat observation data with three growth models from ecological case studies. The package provides tools for model fitting and estimate extraction, example data, and case studies to demonstrate the use-case for each of the example models.