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Hatchling Weight Study

MKGeckos Jun 08, 2007 05:00 PM

Hey guys!

Over the past 39 days since I had my very first hatchling, I've been recording weights. Now I am up to 10 hatchlings and I have 47 weights. What I did with the weights, and what I'll continue to do with the weights in plug them into Excel and make a graph of the weights. I'm also able to do regression on the weights so I can make a line of best fit.

The line of best fit represents my average hatchling growth rate. For example, if you'd like to see how much a hatchling on average will weigh at 20 Days old, simply replace X with 20 and you have your answer, 5.95.

If you guys have any questions, feel free to ask. I thought it would be interesting to see if there is anything special and I thought I'd share it with you guys.
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MK Geckos
Your Source for Leopard Geckos!
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Replies (3)

casichelydia Jun 09, 2007 10:25 AM

Hey,

It's a really good idea to share this sort of thing - even the heavier petshop books omit the numbers when it comes to making generalities about trends in these critters.

The one thing I'd adjust on your data set is the number of data points for each day. To give an accurate repeated-measures average (the value from re-measuring the same animals every so-often), you should re-include the same animals each time. It looks like some days on the graph have one data point, while others have two or three. If you include the same animals and the same number of them in each day's measurements, you'd probably get a tighter fit to a regression curve.

I don't think Excel can do it, but you might also group hatchlings based on incubation temp to see if there's much of an effect of temp on growth rate. Thanks for sharing!

MKGeckos Jun 19, 2007 01:54 AM

>>Hey,
>>
>>It's a really good idea to share this sort of thing - even the heavier petshop books omit the numbers when it comes to making generalities about trends in these critters.
>>
>>The one thing I'd adjust on your data set is the number of data points for each day. To give an accurate repeated-measures average (the value from re-measuring the same animals every so-often), you should re-include the same animals each time. It looks like some days on the graph have one data point, while others have two or three. If you include the same animals and the same number of them in each day's measurements, you'd probably get a tighter fit to a regression curve.
>>
>>I don't think Excel can do it, but you might also group hatchlings based on incubation temp to see if there's much of an effect of temp on growth rate. Thanks for sharing!

Thank you for your input. I'm not exactly sure what you mean. I interpreted it as weight each hatchling on the same day... example, all hatchlings are weighed on Days 3, 5, 7, 9, and 11 of their existence. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
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MK Geckos
Your Source for Leopard Geckos!
MK Geckos Forums

casichelydia Jun 19, 2007 09:39 PM

Nah, I didn't mean that, but I could just as easily be interpreting the goal of your graph wrong.

You want the prediction line to show the average weight of hatchlings you produce on any given day post-hatching.

What you want to do to get that info is measure all your geckos for each day you give a set of measurements. For example, the graph makes it look as though one gecko was measured for weight on day one of its life, three were measured on day two of their lives, two geckos were measured on day three and so forth. To take an appropriate average with that prediction line, you'd need to have the same number of weights (same number of geckos measured, blue data points) for day one, two, three, and so forth. Otherwise, "extra" data points (those second and third dots for some days) will skew your average.

You also want to keep your measurement interval constant, meaning don't skip days. There are no data points for days ~ 12, 28, 29 on the graph. If your measurement interval is a day, you want to measure once each day from the day of hatching for each gecko until a set age (day of life) when you stop measuring. If it's every three days, then you want to measure each three days from the day of hatching for each gecko, and skip the same two day interval for each set of three days through the given animal's life.

I'm not trying to poke holes or trivialize what you've done, because I think you must either be a biology student or have an interest in detail not common to the majority of herpetoculturists. Just trying to spread the wealth of hair-splitting, tedious awareness I gained in biostats courses!

>>>Thank you for your input. I'm not exactly sure what you mean. I interpreted it as weight each hatchling on the same day... example, all hatchlings are weighed on Days 3, 5, 7, 9, and 11 of their existence. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

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