Validação laboratorial e fisiológica de conjunto comercial para a quantificação de corticóides fecais em chimpanzé (Pan troglodytes) e orangotango (Pongo pygmaeus), cativos e submetidos a enriquecimentos ambientais / Laboratorial and physiological validation of comercial kits for quantification of fecal corticoids of captive chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and orangutangs (Pongo pygmaeus) under environmental enriched conditions

Neste trabalho foi realizado estudo comparativo dos níveis de corticóides fecais (CF) de chimpanzé (Pan troglodytes) e orangotango(Pongo pygmaeus). Foram analisadas amostras coletadas em duas fases distintas, relacionadas com a introdução de técnicas de enriquecimento ambiental, a saber: Base (antes da introdução) e Habituação(imediatamente após). Realizamos as validações do conjunto comercial para radioimunoensaio ImmunuChem™ Double Antibody Corticosterone da MP Biomedicals, para mensuração de CF. A validação laboratorial dos conjuntos diagnósticos para uso em extrato fecal de primatas foi realizada pelo método de paralelismo, no qual, para cada espécie, concentrações conhecidas de corticosterona foram adicionadas a um pool de extratos fecais, sendo estas amostras analisadas em seguida. As inclinações das curvas obtidas nestes ensaios e da curva padrão do ensaio foram então comparadas. Os resultados obtidos para chimpanzé e orangotango, foram respectivamente, Y=17,23+1,31*X;R...

A comparative study of fecal corticoids (FC) concentrations was carried out with chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) e orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus). Fecal samples were collected before (Basal) and just after (Habituation)enrichment introduction and analyzed. We performed biochemical and physiological validations of the ImmunuChem™ Double Antibody Corticosterone kit for radioimmunoassay from MP Biomedicals for quantifying FC concentrations. To establish the biochemical validity of our assay we performed parallelism assays in which pooled fecal extracts from both species were spiked with known quantities of corticosterone standard and the slopes of the curves obtained with these samples and the standard curves of the kits were compared. The correlation coefficients were R

The importance of the application of non-invasive techniques in the study of wild animal reproduction

Conservation of biodiversity is one of the major goals of the scientists in many countries. Brazil is one of them and is also well known as the world's largest reserve of biodiversity, which leads to a strategic position in this matter. In the last decade a number of scientific works were published with an increasing participation of Brazilian researchers. One of the keys, besides environmental protection, for the successful conservation of endangered species is reproduction; and the first step is to know how the species function. Traditionally the study of reproductive physiology in wild animals depends on some kind of restrainning, either physical or chemical, which implies different levels of stress. Serial blood sampling necessary to obtain some hormonal profiles are also stressful, unless the animal was trained to accept that procedure, which is hard or even impossible to achieve with some wild species. For that reason some non-invasive techniques were developed, i.e. extraction and measurement of fecal and urinary hormonal metabolites, utilizing radio immune assay (RIA) or enzymatic immune assay (EIA). Different methods of extraction were tested in order to achieve lower costs and reliable results; and validation of the immune assays with different antibodies for a number of wild species were performed with the same purpose. These non-invasive methods for the study of reproductive physiology can be used in free-living and captive wild species as a very useful tool for conservation.