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Photos provide information on age, but not kinship, of Andean bear

, , , , ,
1 Applied Animal Ecology, San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research, San Diego, CA, United States
2 Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin – Madison, Madison, WI, United States
3 Department of Forest and Conservation Sciences, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada
4 Spectacled Bear Conservation Society, Squamish, BC, Canada
5 Centro de Biodiversidad y Genética, Universidad Mayor de San Simon, Cochabamba, Bolivia
6 Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, United Kingdom
7 Conservation Education, San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research, San Diego, CA, United States
8 Current affiliation, We Thrive Global, Reno, Nevada, United States
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.1142v1
Published
Accepted
Subject Areas
Animal Behavior, Conservation Biology, Ecology, Zoology
Keywords
Tremarctos ornatus, Andean bear, age estimation, camera traps, natural markings, kinship, noninvasive, Spectacled bear
Copyright
© 2015 Van Horn et al.
Licence
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
Cite this article
Van Horn RC, Zug B, Appleton RD, Velez-Liendo X, Paisley SL, LaCombe C. 2015. Photos provide information on age, but not kinship, of Andean bear. PeerJ PrePrints 3:e1142v1

Abstract

Using photos of captive Andean bears of known age and pedigree, and photos of wild Andean bear cubs < 6 months old, we evaluated the degree to which visual information may be used to estimate bears’ ages and assess their kinship. We demonstrate that the ages of Andean bear cubs ≤ 6 months old may be estimated from their size relative to their mothers with an average error of < 0.01 ± 13.2 days (SD; n = 14), and that ages of adults ≥ 10 years old may be estimated from the proportion of their nose that is pink with an average error of < 0.01 ± 3.5 years (n = 41). We also show that similarity among the bears’ natural markings, as perceived by humans, is not associated with pedigree kinship among the bears (R2 < 0.001, N = 1,043, p = 0.499). Thus, researchers may use photos of wild Andean bears to estimate the ages of young cubs and older adults, but not to infer their kinship. Given that camera trap photos are one of the most readily available sources of information on large cryptic mammals, we suggest that similar methods be tested for use in other poorly understood species.

Author Comment

This is a revised version of a manuscript that is under review at PeerJ as of 29 May 2015.

Additional Information

Competing Interests

Russell C Van Horn is an employee of the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research. Robyn D Appleton is an employee of the Spectacled Bear Conservation Society. Corrin LaCombe was an employee of the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research when the research described in the manuscript was performed.

Author Contributions

Russell C Van Horn conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, analyzed the data, contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, wrote the paper, prepared figures and/or tables, reviewed drafts of the paper.

Becky Zug conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, analyzed the data, contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, wrote the paper, prepared figures and/or tables, reviewed drafts of the paper.

Robyn D Appleton conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, wrote the paper, reviewed drafts of the paper.

Ximena Velez-Liendo conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, wrote the paper, reviewed drafts of the paper.

Susanna L Paisley conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, wrote the paper, reviewed drafts of the paper.

Corrin LaCombe conceived and designed the experiments, wrote the paper, reviewed drafts of the paper.

Human Ethics

The following information was supplied relating to ethical approvals (i.e., approving body and any reference numbers):

The Research Compliance Office of Miami University has reviewed the human subjects portion of this research (as project 01632e) and ruled it exempt from full IRB review, under Exempt Category 2.

Animal Ethics

The following information was supplied relating to ethical approvals (i.e., approving body and any reference numbers):

1. Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee Zoological Society of San Diego. 2. Approval was granted as #10-023.

Field Study Permissions

The following information was supplied relating to field study approvals (i.e., approving body and any reference numbers):

1. Animal research was approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee Zoological Society of San Diego and governmental approval was granted by the Dirección General Forestal y de Fauna Silvestre (Peru). 2. Approvals were granted as IACUC #10-023 and Resolución Directoral No. 0245-2012-AG-DGFFS-DGEFFS.

Data Deposition

The following information was supplied regarding the deposition of related data:

We plan to deposit data in Dryad. However, according to the Dryad guidelines, because PeerJ is not integrated into Dryad we cannot archive data sets until this manuscript is accepted for publication.

Funding

RVH and CLC were supported by San Diego Zoo Global, BZ was supported by the U.S. Department of Education, and RDA was supported by the International Association for Bear Research & Management, Wildlife Media, Calgary Zoo, and the Spectacled Bear Conservation Society. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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Photos provide information on age, but not kinship, of Andean bear
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