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MINI REVIEW article

Front. Vet. Sci.
Sec. Animal Behavior and Welfare
Volume 11 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fvets.2024.1407479
This article is part of the Research Topic

Advances in Methods of Biochemical Assessment and Diagnosis of Animal Welfare in Wildlife

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Fecal thyroid hormone metabolites in wild ungulates: a mini-review Provisionally Accepted

Valeria Pasciu1* Maria Nieddu2 Francesca Daniela Sotgiu1 Elena Baralla1 Fiammetta Berlinguer1
  • 1Department of Veterinary Medicine, University of Sassari, Italy
  • 2University of Sassari, Italy

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This review aims to analyse the fluctuations of fecal thyroid hormone metabolites (FTMs) related to environmental and individual variables in different species of wild ungulates and provide a collection of assay methods. The great advantage of fecal sampling is being completely non-invasive. A systemic search was conducted from 2019 to 2024, using data sources PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and the World Wide Web, and ten studies were found on this topic. Three studies used the radioimmunoassay method for FTMs analysis, while the others used a less expensive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Most of these papers validated the method for the species-specific matrix. Related to the studied variables, some authors analysed FTM fluctuations only concerning individual variables, and others in response to both. Temperature and fecal cortisol metabolites (FCMs) were the most studied environmental and individual variables, respectively. Since FTMs are an integrative measure of plasma thyroid hormones, the information obtained from a noninvasive-assay method regarding wild ungulate physiology is becoming of great interest to the scientific community.

Keywords: Wild ungulates, Fecal, Thyroid hormone, Environmental Variables, Individual variables, FTMs assay

Received: 26 Mar 2024; Accepted: 09 May 2024.

Copyright: © 2024 Pasciu, Nieddu, Sotgiu, Baralla and Berlinguer. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: PhD. Valeria Pasciu, Department of Veterinary Medicine, University of Sassari, Sassari, Italy