This study explores the use of Free Choice Profiling (FCP) methodology for the qualitative behaviour assessment of emotional expression in the domestic dog (Canis familiaris). Qualitative behaviour assessment is based upon the integration of many pieces of information that in conventional quantitative approaches are recorded separately or not at all. Observers are asked to focus on an animal's interaction with its surrounding environment, and to describe the animal's expressive demeanor, or ‘body language’. A specific characteristic of FCP methodology is that it allows observers the freedom to devise their own descriptive terms, and then to use these personal terms to quantitatively score observed subjects. Application of FCP to qualitative behaviour assessment in animals was originally tested for pigs, and more recently for dairy cows, horses, and ponies. The goal of this study was to apply FCP to the domestic dog, and to investigate the inter-observer reliability of assessments of emotional expression in 10 individual Beagles by a group of 18 untrained observers. The data was analysed using Generalised Procrustes Analysis (GPA), a multivariate statistical technique associated with FCP. The observers achieved highly-significant agreement in their assessments of the dogs’ expressions, thereby establishing the applicability of this methodology for the first time in the domestic dog.

Four morphologically cryptic species of the Bactrocera dorsalis fruit fly complex (B. dorsalis s.s., B. papayae, B. carambolae and B. philippinensis) are serious agricultural pests. As they are difficult to diagnose using traditional taxonomic techniques, we examined the potential for geometric morphometric analysis of wing size and shape to discriminate between them. Fifteen wing landmarks generated size and shape data for 245 specimens for subsequent comparisons among three geographically distinct samples of each species. Intraspecific wing size was significantly different within samples of B. carambolae and B. dorsalis s.s. but not within samples of B. papayae or B. philippinensis. Although B. papayae had the smallest wings (average centroid size=6.002 mm±0.061 SE) and B. dorsalis s.s. the largest (6.349 mm±0.066 SE), interspecific wing size comparisons were generally non-informative and incapable of discriminating species. Contrary to the wing size data, canonical variate analysis based on wing shape data discriminated all species with a relatively high degree of accuracy; individuals were correctly reassigned to their respective species on average 93.27% of the time. A single sample group of B. carambolae from locality ‘TN Malaysia’ was the only sample to be considerably different from its conspecific groups with regards to both wing size and wing shape. This sample was subsequently deemed to have been originally misidentified and likely represents an undescribed species. We demonstrate that geometric morphometric techniques analysing wing shape represent a promising approach for discriminating between morphologically cryptic taxa of the B. dorsalis species complex.