Method development: Assigning sex to African clawless otter spraints and assessing stability of faecal androgen and progestagen metabolites post-defaecation.

Monitoring reproductive physiology in wildlife can be a useful tool for assessing population dynamics for conservation and management purposes. Utilizing non-invasive approaches for this, such as quantifying reproductive hormone metabolites from faeces, can be challenging when defaecation events are not observed, or when cryptic species like African clawless otters () are involved. Additionally, test systems for quantifying hormone metabolites in a species for the first time must first be reliably validated prior to use.