Clarifying the effect of toe clipping on frogs with Bayesian statistics

Abstract

1. Toe clipping is commonly used in population ecology to identify individual amphibians, particularly frogs and toads. Toe clipping may influence the return rate of the marked animals, although results of previous studies have appeared to be contradictory. 2. We re-analysed available data using Bayesian statistics to examine how the return rate of frogs may change with the number of toes removed. 3. Our re-analysis indicated that toe clipping reduces the return rate by 4-11% for each toe removed after the first, assuming the effect is the same for all toes. 4. A second analysis allowed the effect of removing each toe to change linearly with the number removed. This indicated that when one t..