Age determination of common bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) using dental radiography pulp:tooth area ratio measurements.
Journal
PloS one
ISSN: 1932-6203
Titre abrégé: PLoS One
Pays: United States
ID NLM: 101285081
Informations de publication
Date de publication:
2020
2020
Historique:
received:
14
08
2020
accepted:
29
10
2020
entrez:
20
11
2020
pubmed:
21
11
2020
medline:
1
1
2021
Statut:
epublish
Résumé
Age is an important parameter to better understand wildlife populations, and is especially relevant for interpreting data for fecundity, health, and survival assessments. Estimating ages for marine mammals presents a particular challenge due to the environment they inhabit: accessibility is limited and, when temporarily restrained for assessment, the window of opportunity for data collection is relatively short. For wild dolphins, researchers have described a variety of age-determination techniques, but the gold-standard relies upon photo-identification to establish individual observational life histories from birth. However, there are few populations with such long-term data sets, therefore alternative techniques for age estimation are required for individual animals without a known birth period. While there are a variety of methods to estimate ages, each involves some combination of drawbacks, including a lack of precision across all ages, weeks-to-months of analysis time, logistical concerns for field applications, and/or novel techniques still in early development and validation. Here, we describe a non-invasive field technique to determine the age of small cetaceans using periapical dental radiography and subsequent measurement of pulp:tooth area ratios. The technique has been successfully applied for bottlenose dolphins briefly restrained during capture-release heath assessments in various locations in the Gulf of Mexico. Based on our comparisons of dental radiography data to life history ages, the pulp:tooth area ratio method can reliably provide same-day estimates for ages of dolphins up to about 10 years old.
Identifiants
pubmed: 33216762
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0242273
pii: PONE-D-20-25553
pmc: PMC7678971
doi:
Types de publication
Journal Article
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Langues
eng
Sous-ensembles de citation
IM
Pagination
e0242273Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts
J.M.H. owns and operates Companion Animal Dental Services, which has no commercial interests in the work described in this manuscript, and has no involvement in product development or marketing. This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials
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