Towards informed metrics for examining the role of human‐induced animal responses in tag studies on wild animals

Abstract

Two prime issues can detrimentally affect animals that have been equipped with tags; (i) the effect of the capture and restraint process and (ii) the effect of the tag itself. This work examines some of the issues surrounding quantification of tag effects on wild animals for both restrained and free-living animals. A new method to quantify stress effects based on monitoring ventilation rates in relation to activity is suggested for restrained animals which may help improve the practice of handling animals. It is also suggested that various metrics, many derived from accelerometers, can be examined in tagged wild animals to examine the change in behaviours over time with a view to having a better understanding of welfare issues, assuring the quality of recorded data and informing best practice. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Minimizing the impact of biologging devices: Using computational fluid dynamics for optimizing tag design and positioning

“…In addition to collecting vast amounts of movement and behavioural data (Heylen & Nachtsheim, ), biologging devices can collect oceanographic data (Roquet et al, ; Treasure et al, ), and other environmental measures, such as ambient noise levels (Mikkelsen et al, ). However, the attachment of devices to animals is not without consequence for the animals carrying them (Bodey et al, ; Thorstad, Okland, & Heggberget, ; Vandenabeele et al, ; Wilson et al, ). Tag‐induced detriment has often been attributed to tag weight (Kenward, ) which has driven researchers to work within weight‐defined bounds (Casper, ).…”

Animal Research beyond the Laboratory: Report from a Workshop on Places Other than Licensed Establishments (POLEs) in the UK

“…Training is important to help to mitigate the potentially negative consequences of trapping, handling, and other disturbance of wildlife [ 9 ]. For example, trapping is widely perceived as the most stressful element of research for a wild animal, with the level of stress animals experience akin to predation [ 56 ] and associated mortality potentially high [ 57 ].…”

Ethical considerations in fish research

“…Additionally, it is not uncommon to see comments within manuscripts where samples have been lost due to equipment malfunction; thus, a perfectly designed experiment based entirely on power analysis, may fall short if a few samples are lost through technical or human error. Experiments with early life stages may also be subject to high natural mortality (Wilson et al, 2018). Thus, while every effort should always be used to minimise the number of fishes used in live experiments, there may also be circumstances where it is necessary to use more animals than predicted by power analyses.…”

“…Behaviour, or behavioural deficits are often used in the assessment of animal welfare (Mench & Mason, 1997) including choice tests (Dawkins, 1998(Dawkins, , 2004, although these are based on the assumption that the animal will choose what is best for its own welfare, which may not necessarily be the case. In fishes, a variety of welfare indicators have been suggested including changes in colour, ventilation rate, swimming behaviour, reduced food intake, loss of condition, slow growth, morphological abnormalities, injury, disease outbreaks and reduced reproductive output (Huntingford et al, 2006;Sneddon et al, 2016;Wilson et al, 2018). In reality, combined measures are likely to be the best way of assessing welfare (Huntingford et al, 2006) to account for intra-and inter-individual variation in specific responses (Mason & Mendl, 1993).…”