Near Infrared Spectroscopy in Wildlife and Biodiversity

ORCID

CVance: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8466-6077

MSU Affiliation

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences; Department of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, Entomology and Plant Pathology

Creation Date

2026-10-30

Abstract

Near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy has been used to answer a wide variety of questions in wildlife and biodiversity research. Whereas agricultural systems and manufacturing seek to limit variation in production systems, wildlife and biodiversity research must embrace it. Variation amongst individuals is the material on which natural selection operates and NIR spectroscopy provides a means to catalogue this variation and to use it in broader ecological and evolutionary analyses and for practical conservation outcomes. In this review we describe how NIR spectroscopy has been applied in wildlife and biodiversity research to obtain data that we could not obtain otherwise. Here we describe a range of applications for which NIR spectroscopy has been applied to questions in taxonomy, physiology, habitat evaluation and population monitoring and highlight new approaches that will allow NIR spectroscopy to be used more widely in wildlife and ecological studies.

Keywords

complexity of scale, cryptic species, endangered species, habitat selection, metabolomics, NIR spectroscopy, nutritional profiling, physiological status, spatial ecology, taxonomy, variation

Publication Date

1-1-2016

Publication Title

Journal of Near Infrared Spectroscopy

Publisher

SAGE Publications; Optica Publishing Group

First Page

1

Last Page

25

Rights

© 2016 SAGE Publications

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Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.1255/jnirs.1199