[Babase] regarding Alex; susan & amboseli team please read
Jeanne Altmann
babase@www.eco.princeton.edu
Mon, 12 Jul 2004 12:05:11 -0400
Alex has recently come to our attention (both with hormone analyses and in
BABASE conversions) with respect to his date of testes enlargement. Daphne
and I have been looking at the original data and at BABASE, and we see
there is also a potential problem with his estimated age and date of birth:
Jan 94: an adult male and 'sub II' male, shy, are in the notes starting 18
Jan. The sub II male (how were the field team using this label?young
subadult? old subadult?) was described as "Mlozi size, E". During the
month, notes are there about the males being seen or not. Note: Mlozi was
born in Sep 87.
Feb 94: New males Felix and Alex were named and start appearing on the
censuses the beginning of Feb. A post-it note on the sheet in the lab
notes that they only start on the censuses and being entered in the
computer as starting in Feb but they were probably there in Jan.
In BABASE, Alex gets an estimated birthdate (birth status 2) of 3 Feb
87. My guess is that this was done primarily on the basis of the 'Mlozi
size' comment, but perhaps Susan knows where we should look for age
estimates from that time. However, if we really went by the Mlozi
comparison, we would use Sep 87, which is more consistent with maturation
information (below).
Maturation (testes enlargement): Alex is not on the maturation sheets for
several months (forgotten or really E as noted previously?) and then
suddenly appears there in June94 as not E, gets checked each month until
called E in October (but notes on his furry rear end and shyness making it
difficult to check him). In babase, his mstatus is listed as E (estimated)
also, but we know this is a problematic field.
Thus it seems to be that he may have been given a birth date that's earlier
than justified and a matdate that's later than justified. Together, these
lead to his estimated mat age being 7.5 years!!! The range of known mat
ages is 3.3yrs (in Lodge) - 6.6yrs (wild-feeding), putting his estimate
essentially a year later (and beyond the range we said was possible in
BABASE). Thoughts????
thanks,
jeanne