when the correlation structure does not include a grouping factor, the
returned value will be a vector or a matrix with the covariate(s)
associated with object
. If a grouping factor is present, the
returned value will be a list of vectors or matrices with the
covariate(s) corresponding to each grouping level.
For spatial correlation structures, this extracts the distances
implied by the covariates, and excludes 1-observation groups.