Modeling multi-site individual corals growth

Monitoring corals growth trends via individual demographic variables represents, for marine biologists, a crucial issue for assessing corals population sta-tus. The von Bertalanffy function (VBGF) is widely used by non-statisticians for predicting the growth of several marine organisms. Nevertheless, parameter esti-mation of this model requires linearization techniques which neglect environmen-tal factors influence and potential variability in corals colonies. In order to over-come these limitations, a more thorough approach based on a hierarchical non-linear mixed effects model is proposed. Two model specifications, respectively based on the standard and a new VBGF parameterizations, are evaluated using data of the solitary Mediterranean coral, L. pruvoti.