Age determination of common bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) using dental radiography pulp:tooth area ratio measurements.

ABSTRACT: 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

SUBMITTER: Herrman JM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7678971 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature