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Validation of gum-line recession as a reliable technique to age tigers

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Abstract

Like other members of the Panthera genus, tigers are threatened throughout their range. Given their conservation status research focused on their population dynamics in the wild is needed, including population growth, lifespan, and breeding success, which requires reliable estimates of age. Current techniques to estimate age in tigers are either not reliable and/or difficult to apply in the field. Gum-line recession accurately estimates age for mountain lions, but has never been tested for tigers. The goal of this study was to determine whether gum-line recession of the upper canine teeth is a reliable indicator of age in tigers and if so, to define the equation that enables age estimation. We measured gum-line recession in 12 individuals of known ages and performed linear regression analysis to investigate the validity of this technique for tigers. We found a strong relationship between gum-line recession and age, where the model provided reliable age estimates for animals within 1-year age classes in 10 out of 12 tigers measured, providing increased accuracy over current methods.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the University of Pretoria for funding the leading author in conducting this and other related studies of tigers, as well as Save China’s Tigers for providing the animals and logistic support to gather data. The manuscript greatly benefited from comments by Dr. Gary Koehler and Dr. Henk Bertschinger.

Ethical standards

The authors declare that the experiments followed the National Norms and Standards for predators in South Africa, and all the protocols were approved by the University of Pretoria Animal Ethics Committee (V053-12).

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Production Animals Studies, Faculty of Veterinary Science, University of Pretoria, Onderstepoort, 0110, South Africa

    María C. Fàbregas

  2. Department of Production and Animal Health, General Veterinary Health and the Science and Technology of Food Products, University CEU Cardenal Herrera, Valencia, Spain

    Carlos Garcés-Narro

Authors
  1. María C. Fàbregas
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  2. Carlos Garcés-Narro
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to María C. Fàbregas.

Additional information

Communicated by C. Gortázar

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Fàbregas, M.C., Garcés-Narro, C. Validation of gum-line recession as a reliable technique to age tigers. Eur J Wildl Res 60, 947–950 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10344-014-0869-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10344-014-0869-1

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