I want to test the effects of demographic rates (recruitment and mortality) on plant biomass / AB over time. Since the relationship between these variables is not linear, I'm trying to use GAM models instead of GLMM. But, I do not know how to incorporate random effects into the model, which in this case are my samples.
This is very confusing to me that I am learning this type of analysis, and I am having a lot of difficulties.
I thought about doing this: model