Quantifying hormones in exhaled breath for physiological assessment of large whales at sea
Exhaled breath analysis is a non-invasive assessment tool that has shown promise in human diagnostics, and could greatly benefit research, management, and conservation of large whales. However, hormone assessment of whale respiratory vapor (blow) has been challenged by variable water content and unk...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:6050234 2023-05-15T16:08:18+02:00 Quantifying hormones in exhaled breath for physiological assessment of large whales at sea Burgess, Elizabeth A. Hunt, Kathleen E. Kraus, Scott D. Rolland, Rosalind M. 2018-07-17 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6050234/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30018379 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-28200-8 en eng Nature Publishing Group UK http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6050234/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30018379 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-28200-8 © The Author(s) 2018 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. CC-BY Article Text 2018 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-28200-8 2018-07-22T00:38:29Z Exhaled breath analysis is a non-invasive assessment tool that has shown promise in human diagnostics, and could greatly benefit research, management, and conservation of large whales. However, hormone assessment of whale respiratory vapor (blow) has been challenged by variable water content and unknown total volume of collected samples. To advance this technique, we investigated urea (a compound present in narrow range in circulation) as a normalizing factor to correct for blow sample concentration. Normalized progesterone, testosterone, and cortisol concentrations of 100 blow samples from 46 photo-identified North Atlantic right whales (Eubalaena glacialis) were more biologically relevant compared to absolute estimates, varying by sex, age class, or individual. Progesterone was elevated in adult females compared with other cohorts and highest in one independently confirmed pregnant female. For both sexes, testosterone was two-fold higher in reproductively mature whales but studied adult females showed the widest variation. Cortisol was present in relatively low concentrations in blow and demonstrated variation between individual whales, suggesting potential for studies of individual differences in adrenal activity. Incorporation of methodologies that normalize sample concentration are essential for blow hormone analysis of free-swimming whales, and measurement of urea could be used to optimize non-invasive physiological assessment of whales. Text Eubalaena glacialis North Atlantic PubMed Central (PMC) Scientific Reports 8 1 |
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Article Burgess, Elizabeth A. Hunt, Kathleen E. Kraus, Scott D. Rolland, Rosalind M. Quantifying hormones in exhaled breath for physiological assessment of large whales at sea |
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Exhaled breath analysis is a non-invasive assessment tool that has shown promise in human diagnostics, and could greatly benefit research, management, and conservation of large whales. However, hormone assessment of whale respiratory vapor (blow) has been challenged by variable water content and unknown total volume of collected samples. To advance this technique, we investigated urea (a compound present in narrow range in circulation) as a normalizing factor to correct for blow sample concentration. Normalized progesterone, testosterone, and cortisol concentrations of 100 blow samples from 46 photo-identified North Atlantic right whales (Eubalaena glacialis) were more biologically relevant compared to absolute estimates, varying by sex, age class, or individual. Progesterone was elevated in adult females compared with other cohorts and highest in one independently confirmed pregnant female. For both sexes, testosterone was two-fold higher in reproductively mature whales but studied adult females showed the widest variation. Cortisol was present in relatively low concentrations in blow and demonstrated variation between individual whales, suggesting potential for studies of individual differences in adrenal activity. Incorporation of methodologies that normalize sample concentration are essential for blow hormone analysis of free-swimming whales, and measurement of urea could be used to optimize non-invasive physiological assessment of whales. |
format |
Text |
author |
Burgess, Elizabeth A. Hunt, Kathleen E. Kraus, Scott D. Rolland, Rosalind M. |
author_facet |
Burgess, Elizabeth A. Hunt, Kathleen E. Kraus, Scott D. Rolland, Rosalind M. |
author_sort |
Burgess, Elizabeth A. |
title |
Quantifying hormones in exhaled breath for physiological assessment of large whales at sea |
title_short |
Quantifying hormones in exhaled breath for physiological assessment of large whales at sea |
title_full |
Quantifying hormones in exhaled breath for physiological assessment of large whales at sea |
title_fullStr |
Quantifying hormones in exhaled breath for physiological assessment of large whales at sea |
title_full_unstemmed |
Quantifying hormones in exhaled breath for physiological assessment of large whales at sea |
title_sort |
quantifying hormones in exhaled breath for physiological assessment of large whales at sea |
publisher |
Nature Publishing Group UK |
publishDate |
2018 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6050234/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30018379 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-28200-8 |
genre |
Eubalaena glacialis North Atlantic |
genre_facet |
Eubalaena glacialis North Atlantic |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6050234/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30018379 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-28200-8 |
op_rights |
© The Author(s) 2018 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
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CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-28200-8 |
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Scientific Reports |
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