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© 2020. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.

Abstract

Investigating the drivers of diet quality is a key issue in wildlife ecology and conservation. Fecal near infrared reflectance spectroscopy (f‐NIRS) is widely used to assess dietary quality since it allows for noninvasive, rapid, and low‐cost analysis of nutrients. Samples for f‐NIRS can be collected and analyzed with or without knowledge of animal identities. While anonymous sampling allows to reduce the costs of individual identification, as it neither requires physical captures nor DNA genotyping, it neglects the potential effects of individual variation. As a consequence, regression models fitted to investigate the drivers of dietary quality may suffer severe issues of pseudoreplication. I investigated the relationship between crude protein and ecological predictors at different time periods to assess the level of individual heterogeneity in diet quality of 22 marked chamois Rupicapra rupicapra monitored over 2 years. Models with and without individual grouping effect were fitted to simulate identifiable and anonymous fecal sampling, and model estimates were compared to evaluate the consequences of anonymizing data collection and analysis. The variance explained by the individual random effect and the value of diet repeatability varied with seasons and peaked in winter. Despite the occurrence of individual variation in dietary quality, ecological parameter estimates under identifiable or anonymous sampling were consistently similar. This study suggests that anonymous fecal sampling may provide robust estimates of the relationship between dietary quality and ecological correlates. However, since the level of individual heterogeneity in dietary quality may vary with species‐ or study‐specific features, inconsequential pseudoreplication should not be assumed in other taxa. When individual differences are known to be inconsequential, anonymous sampling allows to optimize the trade‐off between sampling intensity and representativeness. When pseudoreplication is consequential, however, no conclusive remedy exists to effectively resolve nonindependence.

Details

Title
Anonymous fecal sampling and NIRS studies of diet quality: Problem or opportunity?
Author
Corlatti, Luca 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo 

 Chair of Wildlife Ecology and Management, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany 
Pages
6089-6096
Section
ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Publication year
2020
Publication date
Jun 2020
Publisher
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
e-ISSN
20457758
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
2417467856
Copyright
© 2020. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.