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- Title
Prenatal data impacts common bottlenose dolphin ( Tursiops truncatus) growth parameters estimated by length-at-age curves.
- Authors
Neuenhoff, Rachel D.; Cowan, Daniel F.; Whitehead, Heidi; Marshall, Christopher D.
- Abstract
Compilation of marine mammal demographic data is central to management efforts. However, marine mammal length-at-age growth curves demonstrate limitations. Physiological growth parameters of terrestrial mammals are typically estimated using curvilinear models fit to size-at-age data along a time series from conception to senescence. The difficulty of collecting and aging prenatal cetaceans is addressed here, and growth parameters of common bottlenose dolphins ( Tursiops truncatus) along coastal Texas were estimated using length-at-age information from a broader scope of age classes, including late-term fetuses. A Gompertz growth curve fit to pre- and postnatal data underestimated size parameters, but demonstrated similar growth rate constants ( k) to an exclusively postnatal model. However, when growth parameters were broken out, the absolute growth rate ( G) and rate of growth decay ( g) decreased (0.44 from 0.27 and 0.55 from 0.39, respectively), which underscores the importance of reporting k in its expanded form ( G/ g). Although the Gompertz fits most age classes well, it cannot explain growth in all age classes. We argue that a novel sigmoidal model would be more useful for inference.
- Subjects
TEXAS; FETAL behavior; BOTTLENOSE dolphin; CETACEA; MARINE mammals; COASTS; PHYSIOLOGY
- Publication
Marine Mammal Science, 2011, Vol 27, Issue 1, p195
- ISSN
0824-0469
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/j.1748-7692.2010.00394.x