Individual Recognition of Amphibians: Effects of Toe Clipping and Fluorescent Tagging on the Salamander Plethodon vehiculum

Comparing two types of internal tags in juvenile blue crabs

“…Although tagging can have an immediate mortality effect (Uglem and Grimsen, 1995, this study), most studies, like ours, do not report a tag effect on long-term mortality for either microwire (e.g., van Montfrans et al, 1986;Fitz and Wiegert, 1991;Uglem and Grimsen, 1995) or elastomer (Bailey et al, 1998;Malone et al, 1999;Davis and Ovaska, 2001). As in the present study, most also reported no effects on animal growth of either microwire (e.g., Russell and Hales, 1992;Kneib and Huggler, 2001) or elastomer (Malone et al, 1999;Davis and Ovaska, 2001). The presence of tags did not interfere with the molting process in blue crabs in a way that affected overall growth (this study, Fitz and Wiegert, 1991) or the step increase in size per molt (van Montfrans et al, 1986).…”

Toe Clipping of Amphibians and Reptiles: Science, Ethics, and the Law1

“…With one exception, our review (Table 1) shows few areas where research consistently suggests a problem exists. Studies of survival, growth, and locomotor performance almost invariably show no effect (for an exception, see Davis and Ovaska, 2001), but a robust number of studies suggest that the probability of recapture can be reduced in frogs. Even here it is sometimes difficult to be certain, as repeated analyses of the same species, and sometimes the same data sets, can give different answers.…”

“…In most of these, the baseline for comparison (the ''control'') is animals marked only once, rather than the methodologically preferable but methodologically difficult true control of no marking (for an exception see Davis and Ovaska, 2001). Of those, 11 addressed salamanders, 45 focused on frogs, 12 looked at lizards, and one involved crocodilians.…”

Habitat Fragmentation by a Levee and Its Impact on Frog Population in the Civilian Control Zone

“…A future study can adopt, for example, the visible implant fluorescent elastomer(VIE)to identify individual frogs (Davis and Ovaska, 2001). …”