Dataset for: Estimating pregnancy rate from blubber progesterone levels of a blindly biopsied beluga population poses methodological, analytical and statistical challenges
Beluga ( Delphinapterus leucas ) from the St. Lawrence Estuary, Canada, have been declining since the early 2000s, suggesting recruitment issues as a result of low fecundity, abnormal abortion rates or poor calf or juvenile survival. Pregnancy is difficult to observe in cetaceans, making the ground-...
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ftzenodo:oai:zenodo.org:8306037 2024-09-15T17:58:57+00:00 Dataset for: Estimating pregnancy rate from blubber progesterone levels of a blindly biopsied beluga population poses methodological, analytical and statistical challenges Renaud, Limoilou-Amelie 2023-08-31 https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.34tmpg4r5 unknown Zenodo https://zenodo.org/communities/dryad https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.34tmpg4r5 oai:zenodo.org:8306037 info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess Creative Commons Zero v1.0 Universal https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode Beluga whales Biopsy blubber progesterone mixture model Pregnancy info:eu-repo/semantics/other 2023 ftzenodo https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.34tmpg4r5 2024-07-25T11:10:48Z Beluga ( Delphinapterus leucas ) from the St. Lawrence Estuary, Canada, have been declining since the early 2000s, suggesting recruitment issues as a result of low fecundity, abnormal abortion rates or poor calf or juvenile survival. Pregnancy is difficult to observe in cetaceans, making the ground-truthing of pregnancy estimates in wild individuals challenging. Blubber progesterone concentrations were contrasted among 62 SLE beluga with a known reproductive state (i.e., pregnant, resting, parturient, and lactating females), that were found dead in 1997–2019. The suitability of a threshold obtained from decaying carcasses to assess reproductive state and pregnancy rate of freshly-dead or free-ranging and blindly-sampled beluga was examined using three statistical approaches and two datasets (135 freshly-harvested carcasses in Nunavik, and 65 biopsy-sampled SLE beluga). Progesterone concentrations in decaying carcasses were considerably higher in known-pregnant (mean ± sd: 365 ± 244 ng g -1 of tissue) than resting ( 3.1 ± 4.5 ng g -1 of tissue ) or lactating ( 38.4 ± 100 ng g -1 of tissue ) females. An approach based on statistical mixtures of distributions and a logistic regression was compared to the commonly-used, fixed threshold approach (here, 100 ng g -1 ) for discriminating pregnant from non-pregnant females. The error rate for classifying individuals of known reproductive status was the lowest for the fixed threshold and logistic regression approaches, but the mixture approach required limited a priori knowledge for clustering individuals of unknown pregnancy status. Mismatches in assignations occurred at lipid content <10% of sample weight. Our results emphasize the importance of reporting lipid contents and progesterone concentrations in both units (ng g -1 of tissue and ng g -1 of lipid) when sample mass is low. By highlighting ways to circumvent potential biases in field sampling associated with capturability of different segments of a population, this study also enhances the usefulness of the ... Other/Unknown Material Beluga Beluga* Delphinapterus leucas Nunavik Zenodo |
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Beluga whales Biopsy blubber progesterone mixture model Pregnancy |
spellingShingle |
Beluga whales Biopsy blubber progesterone mixture model Pregnancy Renaud, Limoilou-Amelie Dataset for: Estimating pregnancy rate from blubber progesterone levels of a blindly biopsied beluga population poses methodological, analytical and statistical challenges |
topic_facet |
Beluga whales Biopsy blubber progesterone mixture model Pregnancy |
description |
Beluga ( Delphinapterus leucas ) from the St. Lawrence Estuary, Canada, have been declining since the early 2000s, suggesting recruitment issues as a result of low fecundity, abnormal abortion rates or poor calf or juvenile survival. Pregnancy is difficult to observe in cetaceans, making the ground-truthing of pregnancy estimates in wild individuals challenging. Blubber progesterone concentrations were contrasted among 62 SLE beluga with a known reproductive state (i.e., pregnant, resting, parturient, and lactating females), that were found dead in 1997–2019. The suitability of a threshold obtained from decaying carcasses to assess reproductive state and pregnancy rate of freshly-dead or free-ranging and blindly-sampled beluga was examined using three statistical approaches and two datasets (135 freshly-harvested carcasses in Nunavik, and 65 biopsy-sampled SLE beluga). Progesterone concentrations in decaying carcasses were considerably higher in known-pregnant (mean ± sd: 365 ± 244 ng g -1 of tissue) than resting ( 3.1 ± 4.5 ng g -1 of tissue ) or lactating ( 38.4 ± 100 ng g -1 of tissue ) females. An approach based on statistical mixtures of distributions and a logistic regression was compared to the commonly-used, fixed threshold approach (here, 100 ng g -1 ) for discriminating pregnant from non-pregnant females. The error rate for classifying individuals of known reproductive status was the lowest for the fixed threshold and logistic regression approaches, but the mixture approach required limited a priori knowledge for clustering individuals of unknown pregnancy status. Mismatches in assignations occurred at lipid content <10% of sample weight. Our results emphasize the importance of reporting lipid contents and progesterone concentrations in both units (ng g -1 of tissue and ng g -1 of lipid) when sample mass is low. By highlighting ways to circumvent potential biases in field sampling associated with capturability of different segments of a population, this study also enhances the usefulness of the ... |
format |
Other/Unknown Material |
author |
Renaud, Limoilou-Amelie |
author_facet |
Renaud, Limoilou-Amelie |
author_sort |
Renaud, Limoilou-Amelie |
title |
Dataset for: Estimating pregnancy rate from blubber progesterone levels of a blindly biopsied beluga population poses methodological, analytical and statistical challenges |
title_short |
Dataset for: Estimating pregnancy rate from blubber progesterone levels of a blindly biopsied beluga population poses methodological, analytical and statistical challenges |
title_full |
Dataset for: Estimating pregnancy rate from blubber progesterone levels of a blindly biopsied beluga population poses methodological, analytical and statistical challenges |
title_fullStr |
Dataset for: Estimating pregnancy rate from blubber progesterone levels of a blindly biopsied beluga population poses methodological, analytical and statistical challenges |
title_full_unstemmed |
Dataset for: Estimating pregnancy rate from blubber progesterone levels of a blindly biopsied beluga population poses methodological, analytical and statistical challenges |
title_sort |
dataset for: estimating pregnancy rate from blubber progesterone levels of a blindly biopsied beluga population poses methodological, analytical and statistical challenges |
publisher |
Zenodo |
publishDate |
2023 |
url |
https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.34tmpg4r5 |
genre |
Beluga Beluga* Delphinapterus leucas Nunavik |
genre_facet |
Beluga Beluga* Delphinapterus leucas Nunavik |
op_relation |
https://zenodo.org/communities/dryad https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.34tmpg4r5 oai:zenodo.org:8306037 |
op_rights |
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess Creative Commons Zero v1.0 Universal https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.34tmpg4r5 |
_version_ |
1810435907620175872 |