Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 2.5
Review of Treatment of Potential Marking Effects in the
Ecological Literature
Number of
Papers
Surveyed
No Marking
Effects
(implicit)
No Marking
Effects
(explicit)
Marking
Tests or
Modifications
Journal
American Naturalist
4
4
0
0
Animal Behaviour
62
59
2
1
Canadian Journal
of Zoology
50
46
0
4
Conservation Biology
10
8
0
2
Ecology
31
28
2
1
Journal of Animal
Ecology
15
15
0
0
Journal of Wildlife
Management
37
30
3
4
Oecologia
12
10
0
2
Oikos
17
15
0
2
Total
238
215
7
16
Percentage
90
3
7
Journals, numbers of papers surveyed in which free-ranging vertebrates were marked, and percentage of
papers that assumed (explicitly or implicitly) that marking had no effect on measurements. All papers
reviewed were published in 1995.
requirements of the statistical method chosen to analyze the data (Burger et al.
1995).
Only 7 percent of the articles surveyed included information directly per-
taining to potential marking effects. Some authors attempted to minimize
marker effects by allowing postmarking recovery to take place in captivity
(Baupre 1995; Forrester 1995; Nelson 1995; Shine and Fitzgerald 1995).
Although this approach might be effective when handling and marking are
stressful or invasive (i.e., internally mounted radiotransmitters), it might also
bias study results if captivity affects behavior or survival after release. For
species that are highly vulnerable to stress from captivity, prolonged recovery
under controlled situations could be less desirable than immediate release
(Hart and Summerfelt 1975).
Other attempts to minimize marker effects included adjusting markers to
fit individual animals (Powell and Bjork 1995) or using expandable and break-
away markers (Adams et al. 1995). Some authors justified the use of a marker
by describing qualitatively how animals appeared to behave normally after
