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The coast of giants: An anthropometric survey of high schoolers on the Adriatic coast of Croatia

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1 Faculty of Sports Studies, Masaryk University, Kamenice 5, 625 00 Brno, Czech Republic, Brno, Czech Republic
2 Gimnazija Metković, Ul. kralja Zvonimira 10, 20350, Metković, Croatia, Metković, Croatia
3 Faculty for Sport and Physical Education, University of Montenegro, Narodne omladine bb, 81400 Niksić, Montenegro, Nikšić, Montenegro
4 Ekonomska škola, Ul. Vladimira Rolovica 2, Bar, Montenegro, Bar, Montenegro
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.3388v1
Published
Accepted
Subject Areas
Anthropology, Nutrition, Pediatrics
Keywords
Croatia, Dalmatia, Dinaric Alps, height, body proportions
Copyright
© 2017 Grasgruber 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
Grasgruber P, Prce S, Stračárová N, Hrazdíra E, Cacek J, Popović S, Hřebíčková S, Potpara P, Davidovič I. 2017. The coast of giants: An anthropometric survey of high schoolers on the Adriatic coast of Croatia. PeerJ Preprints 5:e3388v1

Abstract

The aim of this anthropometric survey was to map regional differences in height and body proportions in eight counties adjacent to the Adriatic coast of Croatia. Body height was measured in 1803 males and 782 females aged 17-20 years at 66 schools in 23 towns. When corrected for population size, average male height in the eight counties is 182.6 cm (182.8 cm in seven counties of Adriatic Croatia and 183.7 cm in four counties of Dalmatia proper). Regional variation is considerable (3.5 cm): from 180.6 cm in the county of Karlovac to 184.1 cm in the county of Split-Dalmacija. The height of females in the eight counties is 168.2 cm (168.3 cm in Adriatic Croatia and 168.5 cm in Dalmatia proper), but it is based on more limited data. The results show that young men from Dalmatia are currently the tallest in the world in the age category of 18 years, and the north-to-south gradient of increasing stature on the Adriatic coast largely mirrors that in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). These parallel changes of height in Croatia and BiH can most likely be explained by unique genetic predispositions that are shared by the local populations of the Dinaric Alps.

Author Comment

This is a submission to PeerJ for review.

Supplemental Information

Supplemental tables and figures

Supplemental tables and figures

DOI: 10.7287/peerj.preprints.3388v1/supp-1

Supplemental dataset

Supplemental dataset

DOI: 10.7287/peerj.preprints.3388v1/supp-3

Additional Information

Competing Interests

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Author Contributions

Pavel Grasgruber 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.

Stipe Prce performed the experiments, reviewed drafts of the paper.

Nikola Stračárová performed the experiments.

Eduard Hrazdíra performed the experiments.

Jan Cacek conceived and designed the experiments.

Stevo Popović wrote the paper, reviewed drafts of the paper.

Sylva Hřebíčková performed the experiments.

Predrag Potpara performed the experiments.

Ivan Davidovič performed the experiments.

Human Ethics

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

The project and all the planned procedures were approved by the Ethics committee of the Faculty of Sports Studies, Masaryk University Brno, under the reference number EKV-2016-094. The Ethics committee assessed the project and found no contradictions with applicable rules, regulations and international guidelines for biomedical research involving human participants. The research was subsequently approved by the Ministry of Education in Croatia, but the final approval depended on individual school directors and their agreement with the students‘ parents. Before the measurements, the examined students were acquianted with the objectives of this project and its ethical issues, and signed an informed consent.

Ethics

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

This study was realized within the project "Anthropological research of sports potential in Dalmatia" number MUNI/A/1090/2016 with the support of the Specific University Research Grant, as provided by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic in the year 2016.

Funding

This study was realized within the project "Anthropological research of sports potential in Dalmatia" number MUNI/A/1090/2016 with the support of the Specific University Research Grant, as provided by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic in the year 2016. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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