Effects of Tail Clipping on Larval Performance and Tail Regeneration Rates in the Near Eastern Fire Salamander, Salamandra infraimmaculata

Abstract

Tail-tip clipping is a common technique for collecting tissue samples from amphibian larvae and adults. Surprisingly, studies of this invasive sampling procedure or of natural tail clipping – i.e., bites inflicted by predators including conspecifics - on the performance and fitness of aquatic larval stages of urodeles are scarce. We conducted two studies in which we assessed the effects of posterior tail clipping (~30 percent of tail) on Near Eastern fire salamander (Salamandra infraimmaculata) larvae. In a laboratory study, we checked regeneration rates of posterior tail-tip clipping at different ages. Regeneration rates were hump-shaped, peaking at the age of ~30 days and then decreasing. This variation in tail regeneration rates suggests tradeoffs in resource allocation between regeneration and somatic growth during early and advanced development. In an outdoor artificial pond experiment, under constant larval densities, we assessed how tail clipping of newborn larvae affects survival to, time to, and size at metamorphosis. Repeated measures ANOVA on mean larval survival per pond revealed no effect of tail clipping. Tail clipping had correspondingly no effect on larval growth and development expressed in size (mass and snout-vent length) at, and time to, metamorphosis. We conclude that despite the given variation in tail regeneration rates throughout larval ontogeny, clipping of 30% percent of the posterior tail area seems to have no adverse effects on larval fitness and survival. We suggest that future use of this imperative tool for the study of amphibian should take into account larval developmental stage during the time of application and not just the relative size of the clipped tail sample.

Plasticity and evolutionary divergence in gene expression associated with alternative habitat use in larvae of the European Fire Salamander

“…For this in situ sampling, we applied a nonlethal sampling technique for transcriptome analysis (Czypionka et al., ), where we obtained larval tail‐tip tissue samples (~5 mm long) for RNA extraction. Tail‐clips can be obtained from living larvae with negligible fitness‐consequences for the sampled individual (Polich, Searcy, & Shaffer, ; Segev et al., ). Their transcriptomes are as information rich as transcriptomes extracted from the complete body and permit conclusive analyses of gene expression divergence (Czypionka et al., ).…”

Parallel habitat acclimatization is realized by the expression of different genes in two closely related salamander species (genus Salamandra)

“…Salamander larvae were caught with nets, and a tail-tip tissue sample (~5-mm long) was taken from each larva. Tail-tip tissue in salamander larvae is known to have a regeneration capacity and can be harvested with little fitness consequences for the individual, as demonstrated for S. infraimmaculata in Israel (Segev et al, 2015). After sampling, the larvae were immediately released at the location of initial capture.…”

The Role of Plasticity and Adaptation in the Incipient Speciation of a Fire Salamander Population

“…Tail-clips were stored in RNA-later and kept at −20 °C, until further analysis. Tail-clipping is typically used when tissue-sampling salamander larvae due to their ability to regenerate their tail, and the demonstrated lack of adverse effect on general performance [49]. Furthermore, tail-clips provide high-quality data for gene expression analysis [50].…”