The objective of this study was to develop near infrared reflectance spectroscopy
(NIRS) calibration equations from bamboo and fecal samples to predict diet composition
and the physiological status of giant pandas.
Discrimination between branch, culm, and leaf parts of bamboo resulted in an Rsquare
(R2) of 0.88. The calibration equation for discriminating between 4 species of
bamboo had an R2 of 0.47. Calibration equations were created for all bamboo species
combined to determine the ability of NIRS to predict the nutrient constituents of CP,
NDF, ADF, DM, and OM. No R2 was lower than 0.96, with the exception of DM at
0.63, which was consistently difficult to accurately predict due to variation in factors
relating to difference in location of lab work (humidity, shipping, methods, etc.).
Giant panda diets vary between seasons from eating primarily leaf to eating
almost only culm. When bamboo part samples were compared between March and
October, all resulting R2s were above 0.80. The sensitivity analyses for leaf and culm
samples within diet season produced inconclusive results, but sensitivity analyses for fecal samples yielded an ability to more greatly discriminate between months that were
further apart.
For giant panda physiological status calibrations, fecal samples were collected
from the Memphis Zoo, Smithsonian's National Zoo, Zoo Atlanta, and San Diego Zoo
from 2006 to 2007. One-hundred fecal spectra were used to develop discriminant
equations with which to predict between adults and juveniles. The resulting calibration
was 100% correct for both age classes. Predictions between 252 male and female fecal
spectra were 89% correct for females and 90% correct for males. A small number of
samples (N= 60) were used to create a discriminant equation to differentiate between
pregnant and non pregnant females. The exercise resulted in an R2 of 0.68 and a
prediction of 100% for both pregnant and not-pregnant.
It has been determined through these studies that NIRS has the potential to
determine nutrient composition of bamboo and giant panda fecals, but increased
sampling and equation development is needed before these calibrations are applicable in
a captive or wild giant panda setting.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/ETD-TAMU-3060 |
| Date | 15 May 2009 |
| Creators | Wiedower, Erin Elizabeth |
| Contributors | Wu, X. Ben |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Thesis, text |
| Format | electronic, application/pdf, born digital |
Page generated in 0.0022 seconds