Qualitative Behavioural Assessment as a welfare indicator for farmed Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) in response to a stressful challenge
Animal welfare assessments have struggled to investigate the emotional states of animals while focusing solely on available empirical evidence. Qualitative Behavioural Assessment (QBA) may provide insights into an animal’s subjective experiences without compromising scientific rigor. Rather than ass...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:10569038 2023-11-12T04:14:34+01:00 Qualitative Behavioural Assessment as a welfare indicator for farmed Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) in response to a stressful challenge Wiese, Timothy Robert Rey Planellas, Sonia Betancor, Monica Haskell, Marie Jarvis, Susan Davie, Andrew Wemelsfelder, Francoise Turnbull, James F. 2023-09-28 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10569038/ https://doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2023.1260090 en eng Frontiers Media S.A. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10569038/ http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2023.1260090 Copyright © 2023 Wiese, Rey Planellas, Betancor, Haskell, Jarvis, Davie, Wemelsfelder and Turnbull. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Front Vet Sci Veterinary Science Text 2023 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2023.1260090 2023-10-15T01:10:01Z Animal welfare assessments have struggled to investigate the emotional states of animals while focusing solely on available empirical evidence. Qualitative Behavioural Assessment (QBA) may provide insights into an animal’s subjective experiences without compromising scientific rigor. Rather than assessing explicit, physical behaviours (i.e., what animals are doing, such as swimming or feeding), QBA describes and quantifies the overall expressive manner in which animals execute those behaviours (i.e., how relaxed or agitated they appear). While QBA has been successfully applied to scientific welfare assessments in a variety of species, its application within aquaculture remains largely unexplored. This study aimed to assess QBA’s effectiveness in capturing changes in the emotional behaviour of Atlantic salmon following exposure to a stressful challenge. Nine tanks of juvenile Atlantic salmon were video-recorded every morning for 15 min over a 7-day period, in the middle of which a stressful challenge (intrusive sampling) was conducted on the salmon. The resultant 1-min, 63 video clips were then semi-randomised to avoid predictability and treatment bias for QBA scorers. Twelve salmon-industry professionals generated a list of 16 qualitative descriptors (e.g., relaxed, agitated, stressed) after viewing unrelated video-recordings depicting varying expressive characteristics of salmon in different contexts. A different group of 5 observers, with varied experience of salmon farming, subsequently scored the 16 descriptors for each clip using a Visual Analogue Scale (VAS). Principal Components Analysis (correlation matrix, no rotation) was used to identify perceived patterns of expressive characteristics across the video-clips, which revealed 4 dimensions explaining 74.5% of the variation between clips. PC1, ranging from ‘relaxed/content/positive active’ to ‘unsettled/stressed/spooked/skittish’ explained the highest percentage of variation (37%). QBA scores for video-clips on PC1, PC2, and PC4 achieved good inter- and ... Text Atlantic salmon Salmo salar PubMed Central (PMC) Frontiers in Veterinary Science 10 |
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Veterinary Science |
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Veterinary Science Wiese, Timothy Robert Rey Planellas, Sonia Betancor, Monica Haskell, Marie Jarvis, Susan Davie, Andrew Wemelsfelder, Francoise Turnbull, James F. Qualitative Behavioural Assessment as a welfare indicator for farmed Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) in response to a stressful challenge |
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Veterinary Science |
description |
Animal welfare assessments have struggled to investigate the emotional states of animals while focusing solely on available empirical evidence. Qualitative Behavioural Assessment (QBA) may provide insights into an animal’s subjective experiences without compromising scientific rigor. Rather than assessing explicit, physical behaviours (i.e., what animals are doing, such as swimming or feeding), QBA describes and quantifies the overall expressive manner in which animals execute those behaviours (i.e., how relaxed or agitated they appear). While QBA has been successfully applied to scientific welfare assessments in a variety of species, its application within aquaculture remains largely unexplored. This study aimed to assess QBA’s effectiveness in capturing changes in the emotional behaviour of Atlantic salmon following exposure to a stressful challenge. Nine tanks of juvenile Atlantic salmon were video-recorded every morning for 15 min over a 7-day period, in the middle of which a stressful challenge (intrusive sampling) was conducted on the salmon. The resultant 1-min, 63 video clips were then semi-randomised to avoid predictability and treatment bias for QBA scorers. Twelve salmon-industry professionals generated a list of 16 qualitative descriptors (e.g., relaxed, agitated, stressed) after viewing unrelated video-recordings depicting varying expressive characteristics of salmon in different contexts. A different group of 5 observers, with varied experience of salmon farming, subsequently scored the 16 descriptors for each clip using a Visual Analogue Scale (VAS). Principal Components Analysis (correlation matrix, no rotation) was used to identify perceived patterns of expressive characteristics across the video-clips, which revealed 4 dimensions explaining 74.5% of the variation between clips. PC1, ranging from ‘relaxed/content/positive active’ to ‘unsettled/stressed/spooked/skittish’ explained the highest percentage of variation (37%). QBA scores for video-clips on PC1, PC2, and PC4 achieved good inter- and ... |
format |
Text |
author |
Wiese, Timothy Robert Rey Planellas, Sonia Betancor, Monica Haskell, Marie Jarvis, Susan Davie, Andrew Wemelsfelder, Francoise Turnbull, James F. |
author_facet |
Wiese, Timothy Robert Rey Planellas, Sonia Betancor, Monica Haskell, Marie Jarvis, Susan Davie, Andrew Wemelsfelder, Francoise Turnbull, James F. |
author_sort |
Wiese, Timothy Robert |
title |
Qualitative Behavioural Assessment as a welfare indicator for farmed Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) in response to a stressful challenge |
title_short |
Qualitative Behavioural Assessment as a welfare indicator for farmed Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) in response to a stressful challenge |
title_full |
Qualitative Behavioural Assessment as a welfare indicator for farmed Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) in response to a stressful challenge |
title_fullStr |
Qualitative Behavioural Assessment as a welfare indicator for farmed Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) in response to a stressful challenge |
title_full_unstemmed |
Qualitative Behavioural Assessment as a welfare indicator for farmed Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) in response to a stressful challenge |
title_sort |
qualitative behavioural assessment as a welfare indicator for farmed atlantic salmon (salmo salar) in response to a stressful challenge |
publisher |
Frontiers Media S.A. |
publishDate |
2023 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10569038/ https://doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2023.1260090 |
genre |
Atlantic salmon Salmo salar |
genre_facet |
Atlantic salmon Salmo salar |
op_source |
Front Vet Sci |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10569038/ http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2023.1260090 |
op_rights |
Copyright © 2023 Wiese, Rey Planellas, Betancor, Haskell, Jarvis, Davie, Wemelsfelder and Turnbull. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2023.1260090 |
container_title |
Frontiers in Veterinary Science |
container_volume |
10 |
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1782332210313953280 |