Dear Zoe, all researches working in the wild had suffered the mortality of few animals. The people that working with bat has mortality in the net, ornithology too. The use of live traps the same: ants attach, hot or cool temperature, etc. As you said the negative result never are published.

Dear Zoe,

When you mean you have difficulties to find negative results, do you mean negative in the statistical and scientific sense (that is, no effect, either positive or negative, on the animals) or do you mean evidences of negative impact on the animals? In general, anecdotal negative effects are more often reported as themselves than absence of noticeable effects, which is often quickly mentioned in the global study. Proper studies investigating non-anecdotal impact on health, reproduction and survival are however scarce, because properly assessing the impact requires two sources of information : one from the bio-logger/instrument and another independent one which can be applied to both equipped and control (non-equipped) individuals. This is exemplified in the penguin paper attached.

In Europe, bird ringing data are gathered in national (and a continental) databases and deaths or injuries during capture/manipulation are recorded in them. But this is raw data and not readily available in reports or papers to my knowledge. If you are interested in them for a report of research project, they can be obtained from EURING.

As it is not clear to me what you mean by "instrumentation" (electronic loggers, transponders, rings and ear tags, any manipulation...), I attached a few references on birds for these different cases. Although I did not find a review on the effect of collars, the search "adverse effect (radio OR GPS) collar" in Google Scholar yielded quite a few useful references

Best,

Charlotte

Article Reliability of flipper-banded penguins as indicators of climate change

Article Effects of blood collection on wild birds: An update

Article A review of the use and the effect of marks and devices on birds

Article Measurement of flying and diving metabolic rate in wild anim...

HI Zoe - your question if answered truly by most field biologists will be almost like committing professional suicide. Owing to the laws and restrictions today in all academic institutions the field data published is almost always only of the positive data collected. The negative influence, or sometimes terminal by accident or unintentional, is not published because of the subsequent consequences. If a researcher reports of any accidents the repercussions for subsequent research are  dire.  

In my field, I am aware of many such accidents where mist-netting results in injury or mortality of birds. It is impossible to find any publications related to this aspect of the research.  

I had a nasty boomerang when I tried to publish a paper with the truth of my experiences in the field and it got sent by the editors to our Nature Reserves Authority as ethically problematic requiring an official enquiry against me and my work (which was at the time endorsed by the NRA :)). In short, bee-eaters are migratory and the farmers in this area kill them by the thousands illegally. I was required to collect the bee-eaters at the hives. We discovered that the bees respond to specific distress calls when the bird is caught in the net, attack and sting them in the eyes in order to kill them. We succeeded in catching and releasing 1000s of bee-eaters safely but ca. 400 got stung. This is what I tried to publish and got into trouble. My quandary, as of most researchers, is it OK to let the farmers kill unknown numbers or to try and save the migrants, in spite of a "smaller price".

Hi Reuven,

The bee behaviour you are describing is indeed really interesting. Even if their reaction is restricted to bee-eaters, that would definitely be a factor to take into account when designing a field study requiring mist-netting on this species.

Were the ethical problems highlighted by the editors only about the initial study design which you stopped after identifying the problem, or did you go on catching the birds after noticing the problem? Given the large number of birds you describe, the latter is probable. In that case, I understand the reaction of the editors, as almost 30% mortality seems indeed very high to me (although of course that would have been 100% had they been caught by poachers). As a comparison, over the thousands of birds I caught or saw others catching, I experienced two fatalities with mist nets and three with other traps or during subsequent manipulation (all of these reported in the ringing databases). Are you now considering alternative ways to catch the birds that would not elicit or at least protect them from the bees' attacks (other catching methods, catching further from bee hives...), or did the whole conservation program fall down?

Best,

Charlotte

Hi Charlotte,

At the time I did not have a choice but to continue in spite of the mortality. Point - please note I say 1000s such that it is not 30% but far less. The other choice was to allow it to become a free-for-all for the farmers. Sorry to say that since then the program has collapsed and the farmers are indeed doing as they see fit.

At the Eilat bird sanctuary (Rolex awards 2000) I also discovered that Carpet Vipers had figured out a way to pick on the leaner migrants that went into deeper torpor. You'll find these papers under my name in RG.

Best,

RY

Oups, my apologies for missing the s! I am sorry to hear that conservation efforts came to a halt. Sadly, it won't be the first ones doomed by lack of political will and law enforcement...

As for the communication of your results, pre-prints can be an option if you want to discuss your methods and findings in more details with the community.