Improving the Precision of Our Ecosystem Calipers: A Modified Morphometric Technique for Estimating Marine Mammal Mass and Body Composition
Mass and body composition are indices of overall animal health and energetic balance and are often used as indicators of resource availability in the environment. This study used morphometric models and isotopic dilution techniques, two commonly used methods in the marine mammal field, to assess bod...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:3948782 2023-05-15T18:43:24+02:00 Improving the Precision of Our Ecosystem Calipers: A Modified Morphometric Technique for Estimating Marine Mammal Mass and Body Composition Shero, Michelle R. Pearson, Linnea E. Costa, Daniel P. Burns, Jennifer M. 2014-03-10 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3948782 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24614685 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0091233 en eng Public Library of Science http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3948782 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24614685 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0091233 This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. CC-BY Research Article Text 2014 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0091233 2014-03-16T01:43:50Z Mass and body composition are indices of overall animal health and energetic balance and are often used as indicators of resource availability in the environment. This study used morphometric models and isotopic dilution techniques, two commonly used methods in the marine mammal field, to assess body composition of Weddell seals (Leptonychotes weddellii, N = 111). Findings indicated that traditional morphometric models that use a series of circular, truncated cones to calculate marine mammal blubber volume and mass overestimated the animal’s measured body mass by 26.9±1.5% SE. However, we developed a new morphometric model that uses elliptical truncated cones, and estimates mass with only −2.8±1.7% error (N = 10). Because this elliptical truncated cone model can estimate body mass without the need for additional correction factors, it has the potential to be a broadly applicable method in marine mammal species. While using elliptical truncated cones yielded significantly smaller blubber mass estimates than circular cones (10.2±0.8% difference; or 3.5±0.3% total body mass), both truncated cone models significantly underestimated total body lipid content as compared to isotopic dilution results, suggesting that animals have substantial internal lipid stores (N = 76). Multiple linear regressions were used to determine the minimum number of morphometric measurements needed to reliably estimate animal mass and body composition so that future animal handling times could be reduced. Reduced models estimated body mass and lipid mass with reasonable accuracy using fewer than five morphometric measurements (root-mean-square-error: 4.91% for body mass, 10.90% for lipid mass, and 10.43% for % lipid). This indicates that when test datasets are available to create calibration coefficients, regression models also offer a way to improve body mass and condition estimates in situations where animal handling times must be short and efficient. Text Weddell Seals PubMed Central (PMC) Weddell PLoS ONE 9 3 e91233 |
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Research Article Shero, Michelle R. Pearson, Linnea E. Costa, Daniel P. Burns, Jennifer M. Improving the Precision of Our Ecosystem Calipers: A Modified Morphometric Technique for Estimating Marine Mammal Mass and Body Composition |
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Research Article |
description |
Mass and body composition are indices of overall animal health and energetic balance and are often used as indicators of resource availability in the environment. This study used morphometric models and isotopic dilution techniques, two commonly used methods in the marine mammal field, to assess body composition of Weddell seals (Leptonychotes weddellii, N = 111). Findings indicated that traditional morphometric models that use a series of circular, truncated cones to calculate marine mammal blubber volume and mass overestimated the animal’s measured body mass by 26.9±1.5% SE. However, we developed a new morphometric model that uses elliptical truncated cones, and estimates mass with only −2.8±1.7% error (N = 10). Because this elliptical truncated cone model can estimate body mass without the need for additional correction factors, it has the potential to be a broadly applicable method in marine mammal species. While using elliptical truncated cones yielded significantly smaller blubber mass estimates than circular cones (10.2±0.8% difference; or 3.5±0.3% total body mass), both truncated cone models significantly underestimated total body lipid content as compared to isotopic dilution results, suggesting that animals have substantial internal lipid stores (N = 76). Multiple linear regressions were used to determine the minimum number of morphometric measurements needed to reliably estimate animal mass and body composition so that future animal handling times could be reduced. Reduced models estimated body mass and lipid mass with reasonable accuracy using fewer than five morphometric measurements (root-mean-square-error: 4.91% for body mass, 10.90% for lipid mass, and 10.43% for % lipid). This indicates that when test datasets are available to create calibration coefficients, regression models also offer a way to improve body mass and condition estimates in situations where animal handling times must be short and efficient. |
format |
Text |
author |
Shero, Michelle R. Pearson, Linnea E. Costa, Daniel P. Burns, Jennifer M. |
author_facet |
Shero, Michelle R. Pearson, Linnea E. Costa, Daniel P. Burns, Jennifer M. |
author_sort |
Shero, Michelle R. |
title |
Improving the Precision of Our Ecosystem Calipers: A Modified Morphometric Technique for Estimating Marine Mammal Mass and Body Composition |
title_short |
Improving the Precision of Our Ecosystem Calipers: A Modified Morphometric Technique for Estimating Marine Mammal Mass and Body Composition |
title_full |
Improving the Precision of Our Ecosystem Calipers: A Modified Morphometric Technique for Estimating Marine Mammal Mass and Body Composition |
title_fullStr |
Improving the Precision of Our Ecosystem Calipers: A Modified Morphometric Technique for Estimating Marine Mammal Mass and Body Composition |
title_full_unstemmed |
Improving the Precision of Our Ecosystem Calipers: A Modified Morphometric Technique for Estimating Marine Mammal Mass and Body Composition |
title_sort |
improving the precision of our ecosystem calipers: a modified morphometric technique for estimating marine mammal mass and body composition |
publisher |
Public Library of Science |
publishDate |
2014 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3948782 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24614685 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0091233 |
geographic |
Weddell |
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Weddell |
genre |
Weddell Seals |
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Weddell Seals |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3948782 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24614685 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0091233 |
op_rights |
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0091233 |
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PLoS ONE |
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9 |
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3 |
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e91233 |
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