Thermal Imaging to Study Stress Non-invasively in Unrestrained Birds.
Thermal Imaging to Study Stress Non-invasively in Unrestrained Birds.
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DOI：
10.3791/53184
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发表时间：
2015-11-06
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Nager R
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Jerem P;Herborn K;McCafferty D;McKeegan D;Nager R
压力是生物学中的一个核心概念，它描述了一系列对挑战的紧急反应。在其他反应中，压力导致血流变化，导致血液净流入关键器官和核心温度升高。这种压力引起的体温过高被用来评估压力。然而，测量核心温度是侵入性的。当血流被重新引导到核心时，身体的外围可以冷却。本文介绍了一种协议，其中外周体温测量非侵入性野生蓝山雀（Cyanistes caeruleus）使用红外热成像。在现场，我们创建了一个设置，通过使用诱饵盒将鸟类带到相机前的理想位置。在施加轻微的压力（关闭盒子，从而捕获鸟）之前，相机会对未受干扰的鸟进行简短的热视频记录，并记录鸟对被困的反应。眼睛区域的裸露皮肤是图像中最温暖的区域。这允许从每个图像帧中自动提取最大眼睛区域温度，然后进行手动数据过滤的进一步步骤，以消除最常见的错误来源（运动模糊，闪烁）。该协议提供了一个时间序列的眼区温度与精细的时间分辨率，使我们能够研究非侵入性的应力响应的动态。进一步的工作需要证明该方法在评估压力方面的有效性，例如调查眼睛区域的温度反应是否与压力源的强度成比例。如果这一点得到证实，它将提供一个有价值的替代方法的压力评估在动物和将是有用的，从生态学家，保护生物学家，生理学家，动物福利研究人员的广泛的研究。
Stress, a central concept in biology, describes a suite of emergency responses to challenges. Among other responses, stress leads to a change in blood flow that results in a net influx of blood to key organs and an increase in core temperature. This stress-induced hyperthermia is used to assess stress. However, measuring core temperature is invasive. As blood flow is redirected to the core, the periphery of the body can cool. This paper describes a protocol where peripheral body temperature is measured non-invasively in wild blue tits (Cyanistes caeruleus) using infrared thermography. In the field we created a set-up bringing the birds to an ideal position in front of the camera by using a baited box. The camera takes a short thermal video recording of the undisturbed bird before applying a mild stressor (closing the box and therefore capturing the bird), and the bird’s response to being trapped is recorded. The bare skin of the eye-region is the warmest area in the image. This allows an automated extraction of the maximum eye-region temperature from each image frame, followed by further steps of manual data filtering removing the most common sources of errors (motion blur, blinking). This protocol provides a time series of eye-region temperature with a fine temporal resolution that allows us to study the dynamics of the stress response non-invasively. Further work needs to demonstrate the usefulness of the method to assess stress, for instance to investigate whether eye-region temperature response is proportional to the strength of the stressor. If this can be confirmed, it will provide a valuable alternative method of stress assessment in animals and will be useful to a wide range of researchers from ecologists, conservation biologists, physiologists to animal welfare researchers.