NicheMapR v3.0.0

This is a major update on the NicheMapR package, being an official release of the transient heat budget models (i.e. accounting for mass-related heating lag) in the form of the functions 'onelump', 'onelump_var', 'twolump' and the 'trans_behav' alogorithm. It also includes a fully open source version of the endotherm model. The release is timed with a forthcoming paper in Methods in Ecology and Evolution on the transient thermoregulation model.

Ectotherm and DEB model updates

The 'onelump' transient heat budget algorithm has been incorporated into the ectotherm function and is run when the parameter 'transient' is set to '1' (but it does not incorporate behaviour at present). The ectotherm function also now includes the 'powers' from the DEB model, i.e. energy flows for food intake, assimilation, mobilisation, maintenance, growth, reproduction/maturation, egg batch buffer, maturity maintenance, and dissipation (p_A, p_C, p_M, p_G, p_R, p_B, p_J, p_D, respectively). This can be useful for analysing the energy budget. The DEB parameter F_m (maximum food encounter rate) was previously an input but really it should have been p_Xm (maximum food energy intake rate), which has now been corrected.

Endotherm model

An issue with the longwave heat loss calculation was resolved in this version and a new vignette providing a full derivation and explanation of the model has been added. Also, some code causing a preemptive increase in core temperature for high air temperatures relative to body temperature was removed from the standard behavioural algorithm. The model is now fully open source and the endoR_devel function runs much faster than before as a result of all the code being in the NicheMapR dynamic link library.