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Résumé :
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The removal of toes in unique combinations ('toe-clipping') has historically been the most popular technique for individually marking amphibians. However, recent studies have questioned the utility and ethics of this technique, and provided impetus for research on the efficacy of alternative methods. In this study, the efficacy of Visible Implant Alphanumeric (VIA) tags for marking juvenile growling grass frogs (Litoria raniformis) was assessed with reference to the fundamental assumptions of the mark-recapture approach. Three questions were investigated: (1) What is the probability of tag loss? (2) What is the probability of tag misidentification, and does it vary between frogs or observers, or with observer experience? and (3) To what extent does tagging influence survival or growth? Laboratory and field trials demonstrated that the probability of tag loss for juvenile L. raniformis was similar to 0.07 (95% CI: 0.03-0.13) when tags where implanted on the dorsolateral region of the thorax, eight times lower than that estimated for tags implanted on the thigh (mean 0.59; 95% CI: 0.29-0.86). Tags were rarely misidentified by naive observers (mean probability of tag misidentification
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