Dear All, recently, while setting me on the straight and narrow about linear contrasts for a linear mixed effect model, Prof Ripley pointed out that my interpertation of the call anova(mymodel.lme) was not correct, because I was meant to add type = "marginal", as in anova(mymodel.lme, type = "marginal") I tried to look deeper in the issue, asking people, checking on the R-list archives and googling around, but the best I could find was another old post reiterating that the anova call for fixed terms in a mixed model requires *type = "marginal"*. I also checked MASS IV and Pinheiro & Bates, but I am not sure how much I got from my read. As I am not a statistician, I'd simply like to ask whether is this the *standard* way of generation an anova table for a mixed effect model, or, if it is not, what are the general rules underlying the application of a marginal approach for a mixed model effect. Regards, Federico Calboli ======================== Federico C.F. Calboli Department of Biology University College London Room 327 Darwin Building Gower Street London WClE 6BT Tel: (+44) 020 7679 4395 Fax (+44) 020 7679 7096 f.calboli at ucl.ac.uk