Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Although for terrestrial animals costs associated with carrying a load increase
linearly with load mass (Taylor et al. 1980), intra- and interspecific differences
in biology should preclude the establishment of a threshold that transcends
taxonomic groups (Bertaux et al. 1994). Societies should assume a more com-
prehensive responsibility to indicate to their members possible shortcomings
associated with various marking procedures, although it remains the responsi-
bility of individual researchers to address the potential effects of markers on
their study species.
Where information is lacking on a particular marker or its effect, zoologi-
cal societies should encourage additional evaluation studies. It is imperative
that markers used in research be acceptable to animal care and use committees
before project initiation, and zoological societies should strive to harmonize
their standards with those set by such committees and disseminate informa-
tion regarding acceptable markers and protocols to committees. Otherwise,
research using newly tested markers might be needlessly precluded because of
an uncertainty regarding marker effects.
Survey of Recent Ecological Studies
j
In light of the measurable and obvious effects of markers to numerous verte-
brate species (tables 2.1-2.4), we examined the treatment of potential marking
effects in a sample of recent peer-reviewed literature. Specifically, we assessed
the frequency with which researchers addressed potential marker effects, either
by using methodologies that reduced potential effects or by testing for such
effects qualitatively or statistically. We surveyed nine journals (table 2.5) that
publish studies on a broad range of taxonomic groups for articles in which ver-
tebrates had been marked; our survey included only articles in which the pri-
mary objective was to address general issues related to animal biology rather
than to study marking effects.
We found that in most instances (90 percent,
n
= 238), authors did not
address potential effects of marking, or at least did not report any such con-
sideration in the article (table 2.5). Undoubtedly, some authors attempted
to minimize or evaluate marker effects but chose not to report these efforts
in the article; however, we suspect that such cases were uncommon. We found
no indication that the failure to evaluate marker effects was weighted toward a
given taxonomic group or journal. In 3 percent of cases authors assumed
explicitly that markers did not affect animals. Such assumptions were usual-
ly based on previous reports showing no significant marking effects in the
target (or related) species (Artiss and Martin 1995; Ralls et al. 1995) or on
