Quantitative Fatty Acid Signature Analysis in R
Description
An implementation of Quantitative Fatty Acid Signature
Analysis (QFASA) in R. QFASA is a method of estimating the diet
composition of predators. The fundamental unit of information in
QFASA is a fatty acid signature (signature), which is a vector of
proportions describing the composition of fatty acids within lipids.
Signature data from at least one predator and from samples of all
potential prey types are required. Calibration coefficients, which
adjust for the differential metabolism of individual fatty acids by
predators, are also required. Given those data inputs, a predator
signature is modeled as a mixture of prey signatures and its diet
estimate is obtained as the mixture that minimizes a measure of
distance between the observed and modeled signatures. A variety of
estimation options and simulation capabilities are implemented.
Please refer to the vignette for additional details and references.