Date of Award
4-1-2019
Document Type
Honors Thesis
Department
Biology
First Advisor
Daniel Gonzalez-Socoloske
Abstract
This study investigates the intraspecific relationship between body length and chewing cycle duration (CCD) among West Indian manatees (Trichechus manatus). We recorded 18 captive manatees of varying body lengths consuming two food types. Additionally, nine of these manatees were recorded on two separate occasions, six years apart, allowing us to control for individual variation to test whether CCD increases as the manatees grow. CCD was determined from the recordings using Raven Pro 1.5 bioacoustic analysis software. Food type (r=0.78, p=6.8x10-5, n=17) and body length (r=0.53, p=0.033, n=17) significantly affected CCD. Manatees chew at a consistent rate, so it may be possible to distinguish between individuals in the wild based on mastication rate. However, due to individual variation and the large effect size of food type it would be difficult to accurately estimate body size from recordings of manatee mastication.
Recommended Citation
Weir, Adam, "Relationship of Mastication Rate and Body Length in West Indian Manatees" (2019). Honors Theses. 316.
https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/honors/316
Subject Area
Manatees; Mastication
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
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