Analyzing plant disease epidemics with the R package epiphy
Abstract
This paper presents the R package epiphy which provides a common framework for spatialized plant disease intensity data collected at one or more time points. Many statistical methods developed over the last decades to describe and quantify plant disease epidemics are implemented. The paper is an introduction to the framework concepts and the provided tools using different sample codes to illustrate possible workflows.
Keywords: plant disease epidemics, phytopathology, spatial data, spatial aggregation, aggregation index, beta-binomial distribution, Taylor’s power law, binary power law, spatial hierarchy analysis, SADIE, R.
Introduction
Performing analyses of plant disease intensity data is a common task for many field phytopathologists. Different softwares have been developped to make computationally available some statistical methods, but there are separated programs and are sometimes restricted to a specific computer system.
This paper describes the version 0.5.0 of the package epiphy for R (R Core Team 2015), which offers an uniform and coherent framework to perform spatial analyses in plant disease epidemics. Efforts were made to ensure that the users can fluently and fluidly carry out the data analyses that meet their needs, making it possible to generalize and automate such tasks, and piece together a sequence of operations, while limiting the need for reimplementing methods described in the scientific literature to save time and reduce the potential for error. Another key advantage of this package is to allow users unfamiliar with these methods (e.g. students, other scientists) to use them with safeguards against misuses of methods specific for a given kind of data set for instance. While firstly intented to be a toolbox for phytopathologists, implemented methods may be easily translatable to other data contexts.
This package consists of three components: a bundle of historical data sets in plant disease epidemiology, a set of relevant data classes to reliably and efficiently handle date sets, and statistical methods developped over the last few decades to extract information from collected data sets. Information about these different components are given in this paper, but the main amphasis is made on the practical tools using code examples.
As the epiphy package is not yet available on CRAN, one needs to use the following lines to install it:
Data sets
The package epiphy is provided with a bundle of more
than 10 historical data sets that were mainly published in plant disease
epidemiology literature. There is, for example, counts of arthropods
made in a wheat field in UK in 1996 (Holland,
Winder, and Perry 1999) or incidence of tomato spotted wilt virus
(TSWV) disease recorded in field trials at the Waite Institute
(Australia) in 1929 (Cochran 1936). These
two data sets (called arthropods and
tomato_tswv$field_1929 in epiphy) will be
used throughout this paper. To take a look at all the available data
sets, type data(package = "epiphy"). Each data set is
supported by relevant documentation specifying briefly the context of
data collection, the data structure and the published references. Note
that you do not need to use the function data to load a
provided data set because all of them are already lazily loaded when
epiphy is loaded. This means that they will not occupy
any memory until you use them.
## 'data.frame': 378 obs. of 6 variables:
## $ x : int 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 ...
## $ y : int 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 ...
## $ xm: int 0 30 60 90 120 150 180 0 30 60 ...
## $ ym: int 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 30 30 30 ...
## $ t : int 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 ...
## $ i : int 29 32 2 24 20 10 26 21 25 12 ...## 'data.frame': 4320 obs. of 5 variables:
## $ x: int 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 ...
## $ y: int 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ...
## $ t: int 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 ...
## $ i: int 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 ...
## $ n: int 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 ...In these two examples, x and y correspond to the spatial coordinates of the sampling units distributed in a regular two-dimensional grid. Specifically x and y are the row id and the within-row sampling unit id, respectively. t variable stands for the assessment time or date. There are six and three recording dates for the counts of arthropods and the TSWV incidence data sets, respectively. i variable corresponds to the number of recorded individuals (arhtropods or diseased plants) in each sampling unit. n, which is only there in incidence data sets, is the total number of individuals in a sampling unit. As in the raw TSWV incidence data set, n = 1 everywhere, this means that each sampling unit contains only one plant and so i can only be equal to 0 (the plant is healthy) or 1 (the plant is diseased).
Conceptual framework
In order to collect spatial plant disease data, an appropriate
sampling unit (or quadrat or sample unit or cluster) corresponding to a
location where assessments are carried out must be chosen. It may be a
plant unit (typically a leaf in the case of foliar pathogens), an
indivudal plant or a cluster of nearby plants. The different ways of
recording disease levels (or disease intensity) were sometimes confusing
in the literature. We strive to stick to the nomenclature proposed by
McRoberts, Hughes, and Madden ( 2003)
where the count of visible symptoms (such as lesions), the presence or
absence of disease, and the assessment of the proportion of plant tissue
diseased correspond to count, incidence and severity data, respectively.
To reliably handle such kinds of observational data sets, the package
epiphy relies on the definition of a set of relevant
classes. There is a mother class, named intensity, which
makes it possible to format disease data sets for further analyses and
check that everything is fine with the provided data (e.g. the input
data must be a data frame). Object creation is only possible for one of
the three subclasses of intensity which are
count, incidence and severity for
eponymous kinds of data. (Note that there is no implemented methods for
the severity class at the moment.) Count data are integers
starting from zero with no upper limit, while incidence data differ only
by a upper limit set equal to the number of individuals in the sampling
unit. Severity data correspond to percentages ranging from 0 to
100%.
When creating an object of one of the subclasses of
intensity, it is necessary to perform variable mapping to
describe how variables in the input data frame will be mapped to
spatial, temporal and observational properties of the analysis methods
described in a later section. The reserved variable names for spatial
information correspond to the three spatial dimensions, x,
y and z. (Note that no currently implemented
method deals with the third dimension z). t is
used to map temporal information. Finally, i and
n are reserved for the so-called observational properties.
They stand for recorded intensity and number of individuals in a
sampling unit, respectively. Variable mapping can be implicit, if (some
of) the reserved names are already present in the column names of the
input data frame, or explicit, if the user make the links between the
reserved names and the column names using the function
mapping. Note that this paradigm is similar to the one used
in ggplot2 package with the function
aes.
# Count data
# We will use only the last assessment date for the arthropods data set:
arthropods_t6 <- arthropods[arthropods$t == 3, ]
# - Explicit mapping:
(cou_t3 <- count(arthropods_t6, mapping(x = x, y = y, t = t, i = i)))## # A mapped object: count class
## # dim: 2 space, 1 time, 1 obs
## [x] [y] . . [t] [i]
## x y xm ym t i
## 1 1 1 0 0 3 3
## 2 2 1 30 0 3 26
## 3 3 1 60 0 3 10
## 4 4 1 90 0 3 8
## 5 5 1 120 0 3 16
## 6 6 1 150 0 3 12
## # ... with 57 more records (rows)# - Total implicit mapping:
cou_t3_bis <- count(arthropods_t6)
# - Partial implicit mapping:
cou_t3_ter <- count(arthropods_t6, mapping(i = i))
all(identical(cou_t3, cou_t3_bis), identical(cou_t3, cou_t3_ter))## [1] TRUE## # A mapped object: incidence class
## # dim: 2 space, 1 time, 2 obs
## [x] [y] [t] [i] [n]
## x y t i n
## 1 1 1 1 0 1
## 2 1 2 1 1 1
## 3 1 3 1 0 1
## 4 1 4 1 1 1
## 5 1 5 1 0 1
## 6 1 6 1 0 1
## # ... with 4314 more records (rows)Some useful information are displayed when you print an
intensity object, such as the exact nature of this object
(count, incidence or severity).
Mapping variables (with squared brackets) and mapped variables (just
below mapping variables) are also printed. You can also plot such
objects to vizualize all the data in a convenient way.
Figure 1. Observation sequences of maps of of the counts of arthropods over time.
It is possible to perform useful data transformation directly with
intensity objects. For example, the clump
function can be used to regroup adjacent sampling units into bigger
ones, and thus redefine what is a sampling unit in a given data set. An
extended version of split was also implemented to deal with
intensity objects in an efficient way. In addition, you can
use as.data.frame anytime you want to retrieve the
underlying data frame of an intensity object (without any
mapping).
Figure 2. Observation sequences of maps of TSWV incidence data over time for two definition of a sampling unit. A sampling unit contains either only one tomato plant (above), or a set of 9 plants (below). In each case, the three maps correspond to the same field at different dates.
inc9_t1 <- split(inc9, by = "t")[[1]]
inc9_t1_sub <- split(inc9_t1, unit_size = c(x = 4, y = 5))[[6]]
plot(inc9_t1)
plot(inc9_t1_sub)
Figure 3. Different sub-parts of the TSWV incidence data set, with only what was observed for the first scoring time (left) and for a subpart of this same scoring time (right).
Statistical methods
A collection of statistical methods has been implemented in epiphy. At the moment, the available tools include several indices of aggregation (e.g. Fisher’s, Lloyd’s and Morisita’s indices), distribution fitting to reveal any spatial aggregation in data sets, power law analysis (Taylor’s and binary forms) and an early version of Spatial Analysis by Distance IndicEs (SADIE). We strived to mention most relevant scientific literature related to each method in the corresponding R help pages.
Most of the time, a function dedicated to some methods is clever
enough to know which “flavor” of the method needs to be used with the
provided data set. For example, if you use the function
power_law with a count data set, the regular
Taylor’s power law will be called, whereas in the case of
incidence data, it will be the binary form of the power
law. That is the other reason why, in addition to performing initial
compliance tests, a set of dedicated classes was implemented to handle
different kinds of intensity data sets. In any case, the
function outputs will let you know what flavor was used to perform the
analysis.
Aggregation indices
The index of aggregation for incidence data is
calculated by default when the agg_index function is used
with such a data set.
## Fisher's index of dispersion:
## (Version for incidence data)
## 1.4If this function is called with count data, the
corresponding version of this index (also called Fisher’s index of
aggregation) is calculated. Other indices may be calculated with
agg_index, such as Lloyd’s index of patchiness and
Morisita’s coefficient of dispersion. The index calculated by default
can be tested using a chi-squared test, a z-test or a c(α) test.
##
## Chi-squared test for (N - 1)*index following a chi-squared distribution
## (df = N - 1)
##
## data: inc9_t1_idx
## X-squared = 222.56, df = 159, p-value = 0.0006578##
## One-sample z-test
##
## data: inc9_t1_idx
## z = 3.7803, p-value = 0.0001566
## alternative hypothesis: two.sided##
## C(alpha) test
##
## data: inc9_t1_idx
## z = 3.7092, p-value = 0.0002079In this example, the null hypothesis of non-aggregation is rejected.
Distribution fitting
As its name implies, the function fit_two_distr try to
fit two different distributions to a given data set. One distribution is
supposed to be representative of a random pattern, while the second one
should denote an aggregated pattern. For count data, the
default distributions are Poisson and negative binomial for random and
aggregated patterns, respectively. For incidence data, the
default distributions are binomial and beta-binomial for random and
aggregated patterns, respectively (Hughes and
Madden 1993; Madden and Hughes 1995). In the latter case,
fit_two_distr may be viewed as an alternative to the BBD
software (Madden and Hughes 1994). Note
that epiphy provides also a set of handy functions to
work with the beta-binomial distribution (dbetabinom,
pbetabinom, qbetabinom and
rbetabinom).
## Fitting of two distributions by maximum likelihood
## for 'count' data.
## Parameter estimates:
##
## (1) Poisson (random):
## Estimate Std.Err Z value Pr(>z)
## lambda 11.68254 0.43062 27.129 < 2.2e-16 ***
## ---
## Signif. codes: 0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1
##
## (2) Negative binomial (aggregated):
## Estimate Std.Err Z value Pr(>z)
## k 3.308038 0.742318 4.4564 8.336e-06 ***
## mu 11.682540 0.916690 12.7443 < 2.2e-16 ***
## prob 0.220675 0.040883 5.3977 6.748e-08 ***
## ---
## Signif. codes: 0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1## Fitting of two distributions by maximum likelihood
## for 'incidence' data.
## Parameter estimates:
##
## (1) Binomial (random):
## Estimate Std.Err Z value Pr(>z)
## prob 0.181250 0.010151 17.855 < 2.2e-16 ***
## ---
## Signif. codes: 0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1
##
## (2) Beta-binomial (aggregated):
## Estimate Std.Err Z value Pr(>z)
## alpha 3.671093 1.457761 2.5183 0.011792 *
## beta 16.574710 6.665468 2.4867 0.012895 *
## prob 0.181326 0.011913 15.2204 < 2.2e-16 ***
## rho 0.047068 0.017943 2.6232 0.008711 **
## theta 0.049393 0.019759 2.4997 0.012428 *
## ---
## Signif. codes: 0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1
Figure 4. Frequency distributions of the count of arthropods in a wheat field in UK on 12 July 1996 (left), and the incidence of TSWV disease in a tomato field in Australia on 18 December 1930 (right). The assessments of arthropods counts and TSWV incidence were reported by Perry et al. ( 1999) and Cochran ( 1936), respectively. The black bars represent observed frequencies, the grey bars represent expected aggregated frequencies (negative binomial on the left and beta-binomial on the right), and the white bars represent expected random frequencies (Poisson on the left and binomial on the right).
Power law
Taylor’s power law can be used to assess the overall degree of
heterogeneity in a collection of count data sets at the
sampling-unit scale (Taylor 1961). A
binary form of this power law was proposed to deal with
incidence data (Hughes and Madden
1992). Taylor’s and binary power laws describe the relationship
between the observed variance of diseased individuals (or individuals of
interest) within a data set and the corresponding variance under the
assumption that the data have a random distribution distribution (i.e.,
Poisson and binomial for count and incidence
data, respectively).
For the sake of illustration, the count of arthropods will be splitted into data sets of 9 sampling units each (3 rows × 3 sampling units × 1 recording date) before performing Taylor’s power law analysis on this data set. To also give an example use of the binary form of the power law, we will split the TSWV incidence data into data sets of 20 sampling units each (4 rows × 5 sampling units of 9 plants each × 1 recording date) in order to also simulate a collection of different data sets.
cou <- count(arthropods[arthropods$x <= 6, ])
cou <- split(cou, unit_size = c(x = 3, y = 3))
cou_plaw <- power_law(cou)
coef(summary(cou_plaw))## Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)
## (Intercept): log_base(Ar) -0.1191721 0.5650426 -0.2109082 8.342179e-01
## log(x): b 1.5752164 0.2010455 7.8351249 4.035639e-09inc9_spl <- split(inc9, unit_size = c(x = 4, y = 5))
inc_plaw <- power_law(inc9_spl)
coef(summary(inc_plaw))## Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)
## (Intercept): log_base(Ar) 0.5533101 1.04346689 0.5302613 6.012425e-01
## log(x): b 1.0994981 0.27222117 4.0389883 5.484494e-04
## Ai 1.7389998 1.81458867 0.9583438 3.483037e-01
## ai 0.1552786 0.06965083 2.2293866 3.631573e-02
## AI 1.1230753 0.19158067 5.8621535 6.727429e-06
## aI 12.5775689 5.64171735 2.2293866 3.631573e-02
Figure 5. Relationship between the logarithm of the observed variance and the logarithm of the theoretical variance for counts of arthropods carryied out in UK (left) and incidence data of TSWV disease collected in Australia (right). Solid lines indicate the linear relationship (on logarithmic axes) between observed and theoretical random variances. Dashed lines indicate the cases where both variances are equal (which suggests an absence of aggregation).
Spatial hierarchy
To carry out spatial hierarchy analyses (Hughes et al. 1997), it is necessary to prepare
the existing data sets. To do so, the threshold function is
of primary interest. As in graphics editors, it allows to “simplify” the
image in the sense that every value below and above a given threshold is
given the value 0 and 1, respectively. By default, everything above 0 is
given 1, and 0 stays at 0. threshold is thus useful to
report a whole sampling unit as “healthy” (0), if no diseased individual
at all was found within the sampling unit, or “diseased” (1) if at least
one diseased individual was found.
Figure 6. Disease incidence of TSWV for sampling units consisting in 9 tomato plants, at the plant level (left) and the sampling unit level (right). These figures were made using the intensively mapped TSWV incidence data reported by Cochran ( 1936) for the first assessment performed on 18 December 1929.
For the sake of illustration, the TSWV incidence data reported by
Cochran ( 1936) will be first splitted
into data sets of 20 sampling units each (4 rows × 5 sampling units of 9 plants each × 1 recording date) to simulate a collection
of different incidence data sets. Then, disease incidence
at the sampling unit level will be calculated, before performing a
spatial hierarchy analysis.
inc_low <- split(inc9, unit_size = c(x = 4, y = 5, t = 1))
inc_high <- lapply(inc_low, threshold)
(inc_sphier <- spatial_hier(inc_low, inc_high))## Spatial hierarchy analysis for 'incidence' data.
##
## Parameter estimate:
## Estimate Std. Error
## log_nu 2.052793 0.08445315
## nu 7.789630 0.65785878
Figure 7. Relationship between the incidences of TSWV disease at the tomato plant and sampling unit level (made of 9 plants) in a two level spatial hierarchy where the sampling unit is the highest level and the plant is the lowest level. Dashed curve is the binomial fit to the data and the solid curve is the beta-binomial fit to the data. This graph is based on 24 data sets of the incidence of TSWV disease collected in 1929 in field trials in Australia.
Spatial Analysis by Distance IndicEs (SADIE)
This two-dimensional geostatistical approach uses the relative locations of the sampling units and the number of diseased individuals per sampling unit to quantify the spatial arrangement of diseased individuals by calculating the distance to regularity (Perry 1995). Regularity is defined as the state where each sampling unit of a given data set contains the same number of diseased individuals (i.e., the mean number of diseased individuals for this data set). The SADIE procedure uses a transportation algorithm to calculate the distance to regularity, and performs a randomization test to determine if an observed distance to regularity is particularly small or large. epiphy implements an early version of a cross-plateform SADIE procedure.
To perform a SADIE analysis, the spatial coordinates must reflect the
real relative distances between the different sampling units. If you
mapped x and y variables to grid coordinates, you
can use the remap function to map them to metric
coordinates (if any in your data set).
set.seed(123)
cou_t3_m <- remap(cou_t3, mapping(x = xm, y = ym))
plot(cou_t3_m)
res <- sadie(cou_t3_m)## Computation of Perry's indices:##
## Call:
## sadie.count(data = cou_t3_m)
##
## First 6 rows of clustering indices:
## x y i cost_flows idx_P idx_LMX prob
## 1 0 0 3 -30.00000 -0.4708909 NA NA
## 2 30 0 26 40.23662 0.7460930 NA NA
## 3 60 0 10 -53.08882 -1.2326789 NA NA
## 4 90 0 8 0.00000 0.0000000 NA NA
## 5 120 0 16 30.00000 0.7601079 NA NA
## 6 150 0 12 30.00000 0.8107080 NA NA
##
## Summary indices:
## overall inflow outflow
## Perry's index 1.171517 -1.310935 1.073955
## Li-Madden-Xu's index NA NA NA
##
## Main outputs:
## Ia: 1.1414 (Pa = 0.14)
##
## 'Total cost': 1274.105
## Number of permutations: 100
Figure 8. Maps of clustering indices with index symbols alone (top) or with interpolated landscape and contours (bottom). For the top map, symbols filled with blue (receivers) and red (donors) color indicate that absolute values of Perry’s indices are > 1.5.
Map comparison (MAPCOMP)
The MAPCOMP procedure proposed by Lavigne et al. ( 2010) relies on the calculation of the Hellinger distance between the density map of recorded intensity data and the density map of sampling effort.
## Map Comparison analysis (mapcomp)
##
## Call:
## mapcomp.count(data = cou_t3_m, delta = 4, bandwidth = 60)
##
## Stat: 0.0989 (P = 0.019802)
Figure 9. Density map.
Conclusion
The package epiphy implements currently many of the methods described in the chapter 9 of the book “The study of plant disease epidemics” (Madden, Hughes, and Bosch 2007). We hope that such statistical methods packaged in a consistent way to be easily used in an open statistical environment will facilitate their use and spread in the phytopathology community, and even beyond.
Acknowledgments
The authors are grateful to Prof. Xiangming Xu for discussion and advice regarding the SADIE procedure.
Annexes
Most of the functions in the package epiphy have been designed to be compatible with pipeline coding. Using the package magrittr, you can pipe the analyses as in the following examples.
library(epiphy)
library(magrittr)
incidence(tomato_tswv$field_1929) %>%
split(by = "t") %>%
getElement(1) %>% # To keep the first assessment time.
clump(unit_size = c(x = 3, y = 3)) %>%
fit_two_distr() %T>%
plot() %>%
summary()
## Fitting of two distributions by maximum likelihood
## for 'incidence' data.
## Parameter estimates:
##
## (1) Binomial (random):
## Estimate Std.Err Z value Pr(>z)
## prob 0.181250 0.010151 17.855 < 2.2e-16 ***
## ---
## Signif. codes: 0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1
##
## (2) Beta-binomial (aggregated):
## Estimate Std.Err Z value Pr(>z)
## alpha 3.671093 1.457761 2.5183 0.011792 *
## beta 16.574710 6.665468 2.4867 0.012895 *
## prob 0.181326 0.011913 15.2204 < 2.2e-16 ***
## rho 0.047068 0.017943 2.6232 0.008711 **
## theta 0.049393 0.019759 2.4997 0.012428 *
## ---
## Signif. codes: 0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1For information, below are the same analyses without pipes.
my_data <- incidence(tomato_tswv$field_1929)
my_data <- split(my_data, by = "t")
my_data <- my_data[[1]]
my_data <- clump(my_data, unit_size = c(x = 3, y = 3))
my_res <- fit_two_distr(my_data)
plot(my_res)
summary(my_res)Here is another example:
count(arthropods) %>%
clump(unit_size = c(x = 3, y = 3)) %>%
split(by = "t") %>%
lapply(agg_index) %T>%
(function(x) plot(sapply(x, function(xx) xx$index), type = "b",
xlab = "Observation sequence",
ylab = "Aggregation index")) %>%
sapply(function(x) chisq.test(x)$p.value)
## 1 2 3 4 5 6
## 1.523216e-07 5.594987e-08 1.549744e-07 2.979618e-13 9.080714e-19 3.287662e-07