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  • The blubber adipocyte index: A nondestructive biomarker of adiposity in humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae)

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    CastrillonPUB4976.pdf (902.6Kb)
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    Author(s)
    Castrillon, Juliana
    Huston, Wilhelmina
    Nash, Susan Bengtson
    Griffith University Author(s)
    Bengtson Nash, Susan M.
    Year published
    2017
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    Abstract
    The ability to accurately evaluate the energetic health of wildlife is of critical importance, particularly under conditions of environmental change. Despite the relevance of this issue, currently there are no reliable, standardized, nonlethal measures to assess the energetic reserves of large, free-roaming marine mammals such as baleen whales. This study investigated the potential of adipocyte area analysis and further, a standardized adipocyte index (AI), to yield reliable information regarding humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) adiposity. Adipocyte area and AI, as ascertained by image analysis, showed a direct ...
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    The ability to accurately evaluate the energetic health of wildlife is of critical importance, particularly under conditions of environmental change. Despite the relevance of this issue, currently there are no reliable, standardized, nonlethal measures to assess the energetic reserves of large, free-roaming marine mammals such as baleen whales. This study investigated the potential of adipocyte area analysis and further, a standardized adipocyte index (AI), to yield reliable information regarding humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) adiposity. Adipocyte area and AI, as ascertained by image analysis, showed a direct correlation with each other but only a weak correlation with the commonly used, but error prone, blubber lipid-percent measure. The relative power of the three respective measures was further evaluated by comparing humpback whale cohorts at different stages of migration and fasting. Adipocyte area, AI, and blubber lipid-percent were assessed by binary logistic regression revealing that adipocyte area had the greatest probability to predict the migration cohort with a high level of redundancy attributed to the AI given their strong linear relationship (r = −.784). When only AI and lipid-percent were assessed, the performance of both predictor variables was significant but the power of AI far exceeded lipid-percent. The sensitivity of adipocyte metrics and the rapid, nonlethal, and inexpensive nature of the methodology and AI calculation validate the inclusion of the AI in long-term monitoring of humpback whale population health, and further raises its potential for broader wildlife applications.
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    Journal Title
    Ecology and Evolution
    Volume
    7
    Issue
    14
    DOI
    https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.2913
    Copyright Statement
    © 2017 The Authors.Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
    Subject
    Ecology
    Ecology not elsewhere classified
    Evolutionary biology
    Publication URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/10072/348178
    Collection
    • Journal articles

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