Estimating the Body Weight of Florida Panthers From Standard Morphometric Measurements

Abstract

Abstract Measuring a mammal's body weight has importance in understanding reproductive biology, ecology, and population health. It can be impractical for a researcher to measure the body weight of mammals when equipment needed to weigh individuals is inadequate or unavailable. My objective here was to develop a model to accurately estimate the body weight of Florida panthers Puma concolor coryi Bang based on the relationship between scale weight, sex, and standard morphometric measurement predictor variables obtainable in the field. I used an information-theoretic approach to evaluate simple and multiple linear regression models with 70% of the data, and validated the best model in the set using the remaining 30%. Individuals maintained a similar proportion of body weight to body length, chest girth2, and neck girth measurements, and the relationship was consistent between sexes. My best model explained 94% of the variation in body weight of Florida panthers, and the observed and estimated body weights in the validation data set were not different. The 95% confidence interval on the bias of the estimated body weight ranged from −1.1 to 0.9 kg in the validation data set. This body-weight estimation model will enable retrospective estimates of the body weight of Florida panthers in cases where standard morphometric measurements are available but the individuals were not weighed.