Abstract
The ability to measure and monitor wildlife populations is important for species management and conservation. The use of near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) to rapidly detect physiological traits from wildlife scat and other body materials could play an important role in the conservation of species. Previous research has demonstrated the potential for NIRS to detect diseases such as the novel COVID-19 from saliva, parasites from feces, and numerous other traits from animal skin, hair, and scat, such as cortisol metabolites, diet quality, sex, and reproductive status, that may be useful for population monitoring. Models developed from NIRS data use light reflected from a sample to relate the variation in the sample’s spectra to variation in a trait, which can then be used to predict that trait in unknown samples based on their spectra. The modelling process involves calibration, validation, and evaluation. Data sampling, pre-treatments, and the selection of training and testing datasets can impact model performance. We review the use of NIRS for measuring physiological traits in animals that may be useful for wildlife management and conservation and suggest future research to advance the application of NIRS for this purpose.
Highlights
near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) has demonstrated the potential to detect biophysical traits from animal excrement, saliva, and tissue samples that may be useful for a number of applications in wildlife management and conservation [31]
We provide a brief overview of NIRS and discuss the application of NIRS for determining disease, population demographics, and diet quality using spectral data collected from animal scat, urine, saliva, hair, skin, and scales
Species traits such as sex, reproductive status, diet quality, stress levels, and disease status shape population management decisions, reintroduction plans, and conservation priorities. Many of these traits have been measured in a variety of animals using NIRS, which has numerous advantages over more traditional methods for assessing population demographics, health, and diet quality [10,26,33,35,36,40,82]
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. NIRS has demonstrated the potential to detect biophysical traits from animal excrement, saliva, and tissue samples that may be useful for a number of applications in wildlife management and conservation [31] These include disease and parasite status [32,33], sex [10,34], species [35], age class [10,36], reproductive status [10,37,38,39], stress levels [40,41], body composition [42,43], and nutritional state [44]. We highlight areas that should be the focus of future research, such as how the pre-treatment of sample material could improve NIRS models, whether the aging of samples impacts the information obtained, and other considerations such as sample size, validation, data variability, and lastly the potential for the shareability of NIRS calibration models
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