ArticleScientific reports2018
Quantifying hormones in exhaled breath for physiological assessment of large whales at sea.
Article in Scientific reports, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers.
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Who cites it
21 citing papers in PubMed, 60 citations in OpenAlex.
- Optimizing cetacean blow collection methods under controlled conditions: implications for further non-invasive UAV-based sampling of the cetacean respiratory microbiome in the wild.Animal microbiome · 2026Article
- Time Series Analysis for Physiological and Endocrinological Data: A Practical Guide.Integrative and comparative biology · 2026Review
- Population Consequences of Physiological Responses to Stressors: A Road Map for Endocrine Data.Integrative and comparative biology · 2026Article
- Non-invasive biomarkers of reproduction in individuals and populations of wild vertebrates.The Journal of reproduction and development · 2026Review
- Article
- Stress, Well-Being, and Reproduction in Wildlife.Advances in experimental medicine and biology · 2026Review
- What normal used to be: Longitudinal adrenal, reproductive, and thyroid hormone profiles from four bowhead whales during a period of Arctic stability.Conservation physiology · 2026Article
- Assessment of a non-invasive approach to pregnancy diagnosis in gray whales through drone-based photogrammetry and faecal hormone analysis.Royal Society open science · 2023Article
- Prolonged baleen hormone cycles suggest atypical reproductive endocrinology of female bowhead whales.Royal Society open science · 2023Article
- Evaluating Potential Cetacean Welfare Indicators from Video of Live Stranded Long-Finned Pilot Whales (Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2022Article
- Bacterial microbiomes from mucus and breath of southern resident killer whales (Conservation physiology · 2022Article
- Is Harbor Porpoise (Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2021Article
- Patterns of cortisol and corticosterone concentrations in humpback whale (Conservation physiology · 2021Article
- Detection of steroid and thyroid hormones in mammalian teeth.Conservation physiology · 2021Article
- Stress and reproductive events detected in North Atlantic right whale blubber using a simplified hormone extraction protocol.Conservation physiology · 2021Article
- Androstenedione and testosterone but not progesterone are potential biomarkers of pregnancy in Humpback Whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) approaching parturition.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- A blubber gene expression index for evaluating stress in marine mammals.Conservation physiology · 2020Article
- The use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to sample the blow microbiome of small cetaceans.PloS one · 2020Article
- Assessment of fecal steroid and thyroid hormone metabolites in eastern North Pacific gray whales.Conservation physiology · 2020Article
- Multi-year patterns in testosterone, cortisol and corticosterone in baleen from adult males of three whale species.Conservation physiology · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Exhaled breath analysis is a non-invasive assessment tool that has shown promise in human diagnostics, and could greatly benefit research, management, and conservation of large whales. However, hormone assessment of whale respiratory vapor (blow) has been challenged by variable water content and unknown total volume of collected samples. To advance this technique, we investigated urea (a compound present in narrow range in circulation) as a normalizing factor to correct for blow sample concentration. Normalized progesterone, testosterone, and cortisol concentrations of 100 blow samples from 46 photo-identified North Atlantic right whales (Eubalaena glacialis) were more biologically relevant compared to absolute estimates, varying by sex, age class, or individual. Progesterone was elevated in adult females compared with other cohorts and highest in one independently confirmed pregnant female. For both sexes, testosterone was two-fold higher in reproductively mature whales but studied adult females showed the widest variation. Cortisol was present in relatively low concentrations in blow and demonstrated variation between individual whales, suggesting potential for studies of individual differences in adrenal activity. Incorporation of methodologies that normalize sample concentration are essential for blow hormone analysis of free-swimming whales, and measurement of urea could be used to optimize non-invasive physiological assessment of whales.
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