Animals are often difficult to distinguish at an individual level, but being able to identify individuals can be crucial in ecological or behavioral studies. In response to this challenge, biologists have developed a range of marking (tattoos, brands, toe-clips) and tagging (PIT, VIA, VIE) methods to identify individuals and cohorts. Animals with complex life cycles are notoriously hard to mark because of the distortion or loss of the tag across metamorphosis. In frogs, few studies have attempted larval tagging and none have been conducted on a tropical species. Here, we present the first successful account of VIE tagging in early larval stages (Gosner stage 25) of the dyeing poison frog (Dendrobates tinctorius) coupled with a novel anaesthetic (2-PHE) application for tadpoles that does not require buffering. Mean weight of individuals at time of tagging was 0.12g, which is the smallest and developmentally youngest anuran larvae tagged to date. We report 81% tag detection over the first month of development, as well as the persistence of tags across metamorphosis in this species. Cumulative tag retention versus tag observation differed by approximately 15% across larval development demonstrating that “lost” tags can be found later in development. Tagging had no effect on tadpole growth rate or survival. Successful application of VIE tags on D. tinctorius tadpoles introduces a new method that can be applied to better understand early life development and dispersal in various tropical species.

中文翻译：

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可见的植入弹性体（VIE）在热带两栖动物的幼体早期阶段获得成功

动物通常很难在个体水平上进行区分，但是能够识别个体在生态或行为研究中至关重要。为了应对这一挑战，生物学家开发了一系列标记（纹身，品牌，脚趾夹）和标记（PIT，VIA，VIE）方法来识别个体和人群。众所周知，具有复杂生命周期的动物由于跨变态的标签变形或丢失而难以标记。在青蛙中，很少有研究尝试对幼虫进行标记，也没有对热带物种进行过研究。在这里，我们介绍了在染毒蛙（Dendrobates tinctorius）的幼虫早期（Gosner阶段25）早期VIE标记的成功案例。），再加上不需要缓冲的新型麻醉（2-PHE）应用。标记时，个体的平均体重为0.12g，是迄今为止标记的最小，发育最年轻的无尾幼虫。我们报告称，在开发的第一个月中，标签检测率达到了81％，而且该物种变态的标签持续存在。在幼虫发育过程中，累积标签保留与标签观察的差异大约为15％，这表明“丢失”的标签可以在以后的开发中找到。标记对t的生长速度或生存没有影响。VIE标签在D. tinctorius t上的成功应用引入了一种新方法，该方法可用于更好地了解早期生命的发展和在各种热带物种中的扩散。