Wildlife translocation is an often-used technique to augment populations or remove animals from harm’s way. Unfortunately, many translocation efforts fail to meet their goals for myriad reasons, particularly because translocated animals make large, erratic movements after release, which can result in high mortality rates. Soft release, holding animals in acclimation pens for some period of time at the recipient site before release, has been proposed as a technique to reduce these large movements and increase the survival of translocated animals. Here, we compared the survival and movement patterns of soft-released Texas horned lizards (Phrynosoma cornutum) with resident lizards, as well as hard-released lizards from a prior study. Juvenile lizards that were soft-released had high survival rates similar to resident lizards, despite still moving more frequently and occupying larger home ranges than residents. Conversely, soft-released adult lizards had survival rates similar to those that were hard-released, and much lower rates than resident adults. Curiously, soft-released adults did not have significantly higher movement rates or home range sizes than residents. Our results suggest that caution should be used before adult Texas horned lizards are translocated. However, juveniles responded well to soft release, and future research should explore whether they are more resilient to translocation in general, or if soft release provided a specific survival advantage. Contrary to our predictions, the survival of translocated animals was not related to their post-release movement patterns, and the mechanism underlying the observed survival patterns is unclear.

中文翻译：

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美国俄克拉荷马州城市军事设施上的德克萨斯角蜥（Phrynosoma cornutum）的软释放易位。

野生动物易位是增加种群数量或使动物摆脱危害的一种常用技术。不幸的是，由于种种原因，许多易位工作未能实现其目标，特别是因为易位动物在释放后进行大范围的不稳定运动，这可能导致很高的死亡率。已经提出软释放，将动物在释放前在接受者的位置保持一段时间，以减少这些大动作并增加易位动物的存活率。在这里，我们比较了软释放的德州角蜥（Phrynosoma cornutum）的生存和运动方式。），常驻蜥蜴以及先前研究中的硬释放蜥蜴。软释放的幼蜥蜴的存活率与常驻蜥蜴相似，尽管与居民相比，其移动频率更高且居住范围更大。相反，软释放的成年蜥蜴的存活率与硬释放的成年蜥蜴相似，并且远低于常驻成年者。奇怪的是，软释放的成年人没有比居民高得多的运动速度或家庭范围大小。我们的结果表明，在成年德克萨斯州有角蜥蜴易位之前应谨慎行事。但是，青少年对软释放反应良好，未来的研究应探讨它们是否总体上对易位更有弹性，或者软释放是否提供了特定的生存优势。与我们的预测相反，