Deer Endocranial Volume

Description

The dataset contains the endocranial volume of 33 red deer (Cervus elaphus), using four different methods of measurement: cardiac tomography, filling the skull with glass beads (yes, the skulls are from dead deer), simply measuring the length, width and height and multiplying the numbers, and using Finarelli's equation. "Endocranial volume" is a proxy for brain size.

Format

A data frame with the following columns.

SkullID

A unique identifier for each red deer.

VolCT

Endocranial volume calculated by cardiac tomography.

VolBead

Endocranial volume calculated by glass beads.

VolLWH

Endocranial volume calculated by length*width*height.

VolFinarelli

Endocranial volume calculated by Finarelli's equation.

VolCT2

A second measurement via cardiac tomography.

VolBead2

A second measurement via glass beads.

VolLWH2

A second measurement via l*w*h.

Note

The data was kindly provided by Corina Logan. Second measurements are provided for several of the deer. Finarelli's equation is used for estimating the brain volume of non-bovid ruminant Artiodactylid species (say that 10 times fast).

* ln(width(skull)) - 6.2722

References

The dataset was collected by Corina Logan itsme@corinalogan.com. It is stored in the Dryad Digital Repository, doi:10.5061/dryad.4t7h2. A more full analysis is given in the paper Logan CJ, Clutton-Brock TH. 2013. Validating methods for estimating endocranial volume in individual red deer (Cervus elaphus). Behavioural Processes 92:143-146. doi:10.1016/j.beproc.2012.10.015. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037663571200232X Richard Cotton richierocks@gmail.com made some modifications while importing it into R.

Results