#DOLPHIN TEETH FREE#

Reliable age estimates are necessary for interpretation and application of biological and contaminant data, population demographics, reproductive status, and necropsy results. This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materialsįor developing a better understanding of wildlife populations, it is critical, but often difficult, to accurately establish an animal’s age. 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. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section.Ĭompeting interests: J.M.H. The funder provided support in the form of salaries for author J.M.H., but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The funding organizations did not play a role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript and only provided financial support in the form of authors' salaries and/or research materials.

is the owner of a commercial company, Companion Animal Dental Services.

Data collection from 20 was part of the Deepwater Horizon NRDA conducted cooperatively among NOAA, other Federal and State Trustees, and BP. (SA 16-17), and in part by the National Marine Mammal Foundation to J.M.H. Data are publicly available through the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative Information & Data Cooperative (GRIIDC) at (doi: 10.7266/ABXDG4P5).įunding: This research was made possible in part by grants from The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative ( ) to L.S. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication.ĭata Availability: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files.

#DOLPHIN TEETH FREE#

This is an open access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. Received: AugAccepted: OctoPublished: November 20, 2020 PLoS ONE 15(11):Įditor: Stephen Raverty, Animal Health Centre, CANADA (2020) Age determination of common bottlenose dolphins ( Tursiops truncatus) using dental radiography pulp:tooth area ratio measurements. 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.Ĭitation: Herrman JM, Morey JS, Takeshita R, De Guise S, Wells RS, McFee W, et al.

The technique has been successfully applied for bottlenose dolphins briefly restrained during capture-release heath assessments in various locations in the Gulf of Mexico. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Age is an important parameter to better understand wildlife populations, and is especially relevant for interpreting data for fecundity, health, and survival assessments.