Using marine mammal necropsy data in animal health surveillance: the case of the harbor porpoise in the Southern North Sea
Rapid changes of marine ecosystems resulting from human activities and climate change, and the subsequent reported rise of infectious diseases in marine mammals, highlight the urgency for timely detection of unusual health events negatively affecting populations. Studies reporting pathological findi...
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ftdoajarticles:oai:doaj.org/article:f96491ba4dae429f8febd31fcb06c9df 2024-02-11T10:06:50+01:00 Using marine mammal necropsy data in animal health surveillance: the case of the harbor porpoise in the Southern North Sea Lonneke L. IJsseldijk Jan van den Broek Marja J. L. Kik Mardik F. Leopold Elisa Bravo Rebolledo Andrea Gröne Hans Heesterbeek 2024-01-01T00:00:00Z https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2023.1306294 https://doaj.org/article/f96491ba4dae429f8febd31fcb06c9df EN eng Frontiers Media S.A. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2023.1306294/full https://doaj.org/toc/2296-7745 2296-7745 doi:10.3389/fmars.2023.1306294 https://doaj.org/article/f96491ba4dae429f8febd31fcb06c9df Frontiers in Marine Science, Vol 10 (2024) cetacean post-mortem investigation animal health surveillance supervised classification methods unsupervised classification methods causes of death Science Q General. Including nature conservation geographical distribution QH1-199.5 article 2024 ftdoajarticles https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2023.1306294 2024-01-21T01:42:37Z Rapid changes of marine ecosystems resulting from human activities and climate change, and the subsequent reported rise of infectious diseases in marine mammals, highlight the urgency for timely detection of unusual health events negatively affecting populations. Studies reporting pathological findings in the commonly stranded harbor porpoise (Phocoena phocoena) on North Atlantic coastlines are essential to describe new and emerging causes of mortality. However, such studies often cannot be used as long-term health surveillance tools due to analytical limitations. We tested 31 variables gained from stranding-, necropsy-, dietary- and marine debris data from 405 harbor porpoises using applied supervised and unsupervised machine learning techniques to explore and analyze this large dataset. We classified and cross-correlated the variables and characterized the importance of the different variables for accurately predicting cause-of-death categories, to allow trend assessment for good conservation decision. The variable ‘age class’ seemed most influential in determining cause-of-death categories, and it became apparent that juveniles died more often due to acute causes, including bycatch, grey-seal-predation and other trauma, while adults of infectious diseases. Neonates were found in summer, and mostly without prey in their stomach and more often stranded alive. The variables assigned as part of the external examination of carcasses, such as imprints from nets and lesions induced by predators, as well as nutritional condition were most important for predicting cause-of-death categories, with a model prediction accuracy of 75%. Future porpoise monitoring, and in particular the assessment of temporal trends, should predominantly focus on influential variables as determined in this study. Pathogen- and contaminant assessment data was not available for all cases, but would be an important step to further complete the dataset. This could be vital for drawing population-inferences and thus for long-term harbor porpoise ... Article in Journal/Newspaper North Atlantic Phocoena phocoena Directory of Open Access Journals: DOAJ Articles Frontiers in Marine Science 10 |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
Directory of Open Access Journals: DOAJ Articles |
op_collection_id |
ftdoajarticles |
language |
English |
topic |
cetacean post-mortem investigation animal health surveillance supervised classification methods unsupervised classification methods causes of death Science Q General. Including nature conservation geographical distribution QH1-199.5 |
spellingShingle |
cetacean post-mortem investigation animal health surveillance supervised classification methods unsupervised classification methods causes of death Science Q General. Including nature conservation geographical distribution QH1-199.5 Lonneke L. IJsseldijk Jan van den Broek Marja J. L. Kik Mardik F. Leopold Elisa Bravo Rebolledo Andrea Gröne Hans Heesterbeek Using marine mammal necropsy data in animal health surveillance: the case of the harbor porpoise in the Southern North Sea |
topic_facet |
cetacean post-mortem investigation animal health surveillance supervised classification methods unsupervised classification methods causes of death Science Q General. Including nature conservation geographical distribution QH1-199.5 |
description |
Rapid changes of marine ecosystems resulting from human activities and climate change, and the subsequent reported rise of infectious diseases in marine mammals, highlight the urgency for timely detection of unusual health events negatively affecting populations. Studies reporting pathological findings in the commonly stranded harbor porpoise (Phocoena phocoena) on North Atlantic coastlines are essential to describe new and emerging causes of mortality. However, such studies often cannot be used as long-term health surveillance tools due to analytical limitations. We tested 31 variables gained from stranding-, necropsy-, dietary- and marine debris data from 405 harbor porpoises using applied supervised and unsupervised machine learning techniques to explore and analyze this large dataset. We classified and cross-correlated the variables and characterized the importance of the different variables for accurately predicting cause-of-death categories, to allow trend assessment for good conservation decision. The variable ‘age class’ seemed most influential in determining cause-of-death categories, and it became apparent that juveniles died more often due to acute causes, including bycatch, grey-seal-predation and other trauma, while adults of infectious diseases. Neonates were found in summer, and mostly without prey in their stomach and more often stranded alive. The variables assigned as part of the external examination of carcasses, such as imprints from nets and lesions induced by predators, as well as nutritional condition were most important for predicting cause-of-death categories, with a model prediction accuracy of 75%. Future porpoise monitoring, and in particular the assessment of temporal trends, should predominantly focus on influential variables as determined in this study. Pathogen- and contaminant assessment data was not available for all cases, but would be an important step to further complete the dataset. This could be vital for drawing population-inferences and thus for long-term harbor porpoise ... |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Lonneke L. IJsseldijk Jan van den Broek Marja J. L. Kik Mardik F. Leopold Elisa Bravo Rebolledo Andrea Gröne Hans Heesterbeek |
author_facet |
Lonneke L. IJsseldijk Jan van den Broek Marja J. L. Kik Mardik F. Leopold Elisa Bravo Rebolledo Andrea Gröne Hans Heesterbeek |
author_sort |
Lonneke L. IJsseldijk |
title |
Using marine mammal necropsy data in animal health surveillance: the case of the harbor porpoise in the Southern North Sea |
title_short |
Using marine mammal necropsy data in animal health surveillance: the case of the harbor porpoise in the Southern North Sea |
title_full |
Using marine mammal necropsy data in animal health surveillance: the case of the harbor porpoise in the Southern North Sea |
title_fullStr |
Using marine mammal necropsy data in animal health surveillance: the case of the harbor porpoise in the Southern North Sea |
title_full_unstemmed |
Using marine mammal necropsy data in animal health surveillance: the case of the harbor porpoise in the Southern North Sea |
title_sort |
using marine mammal necropsy data in animal health surveillance: the case of the harbor porpoise in the southern north sea |
publisher |
Frontiers Media S.A. |
publishDate |
2024 |
url |
https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2023.1306294 https://doaj.org/article/f96491ba4dae429f8febd31fcb06c9df |
genre |
North Atlantic Phocoena phocoena |
genre_facet |
North Atlantic Phocoena phocoena |
op_source |
Frontiers in Marine Science, Vol 10 (2024) |
op_relation |
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2023.1306294/full https://doaj.org/toc/2296-7745 2296-7745 doi:10.3389/fmars.2023.1306294 https://doaj.org/article/f96491ba4dae429f8febd31fcb06c9df |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2023.1306294 |
container_title |
Frontiers in Marine Science |
container_volume |
10 |
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1790604814598537216 |