I've searched for a few papers and two techniques seem to be simple enough to deal with any situation you might find during fieldwork, and reliable enough to produce reliable results (as well as being functional to a wide range of vertebrates). You could use toe clipping and develop a protocol to individualize each marked newt; or you could use elastomers (more specifically, Visible-implant Elastomers).

Toe clipping is simpler and cheaper, but some (like me) might have some ethic restrictions, as it is basically cutting off a part of the animal's body, no matter how tiny it might be. Elastomers, although less aggressive for the animals studied, implies in bigger costs and demands some training, as you would have to inject the elastomer.

I'm providing some literature on the subject, I hope it helps

http://ufwildlife.ifas.ufl.edu/pdfs/campbell%20et%20al%20%202009%20aphe.pdf

http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1655/HERPETOLOGICA-D-13-0004

http://ufwildlife.ifas.ufl.edu/pdfs/hoffmann_etal_2008.pdf

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4020705/

http://researchonline.jcu.edu.au/2832/1/2832-phillott-2007.pdf

 What he said. Belly patterns? Too many patternless bellies in this species.

Try contacting Jeroen van der Kooij, Zoologist working With newts in Norway: [email protected]

Hi,

I would not go for toe clipping, it may have some associated negative impact that can affect you study (and the newts themselfs).

Maybe belly patterning is not as usable as with other newts (e.g. cristatus) but I am pretty sure that photo ID of side or tail patterns will work perfectly for the species, without any associated negative costs.

Good luck,

Germán Orizaola 

@ tail patterns

This will depend on the abundance of the population. At 'regular' densities, you get so many individuals that without formalisation or automation, it quickly becomes impossible to recognise individuals in a reasonable amount of time. In such cases, recapture rates tend to be (very) low and a seemingly exponential amount of sampling effort is required. Luckily, I'm working on fire salamanders ;).

Sure. I was thinking on using ID software (freely available) such as this http://www.conservationresearch.co.uk/crested_newt/crested_newt.htm

http://www.conservationresearch.co.uk/salamander/salamander.htm

I have stopped using that particular piece of software at some point in the past. It might work fine if your pictures are properly standardised in their outlook, similarly cropped etc, though, but personally I switched to a formalisation of the spot pattern into a code, which does not pose (such) stringent demands on the images and as such probably takes a similar amount of time to process. But that's all thanks to the spot pattern, so Germán's suggestion is definitely worth a try.

Here you have a video with Richard Griffiths using photo ID on crested newts (around min 3.30), so you could see the technique to restrain the newt and take the photo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlqNSJgr5Fg

Hope it works for you!!

If you do photographic recaptures (e.g. based on pictures of the side of the tail, as suggested by German), then you might use WildID to identify recaptures. Takes a while but seems to work well.

Did you consider PIT tagging the animals? The most recent generation of tags is pretty small and might work even for a newt as small as the Palmate newt.

I guess the best answer to your question will also depend on why you want to do mark-recapture.

Please keep in mind that for this kind of study you often need both an animal conservation and an animal welfare permit.

We have had a lot of success recently using "Visible Implant Elastomer (VIE)". If you are interested in this approach, I can send you more information, including our project manual, and a couple of papers that are just about out.

Chris

If photographic recapturing does not work I would definitely recommend PIT tagging.  We are using new antennae technology to find the salamander even underground.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/276058269_Monitoring_Non-breeding_Habitat_Activity_by_Subterranean_Detection_of_Ambystomatid_Salamanders_with_Implanted_Passive_Integrated_Transponder_%28PIT%29_Tags_and_a_Radio_Frequency_Identification_%28RFID%29_Antenna_System

Article Monitoring Non-breeding Habitat Activity by Subterranean Det...

Dear all,

Thank you all so much for the overwhelming amount of very useable answers and suggestions! Like Benedikt mentioned, we are indeed restricted by some ethical issues so the elastomers, pitt tags (I have some experience with those) and toe clipping are unfortunately not possible. I would love to give the elastomers a try at some point though! Photograpic techniques seem to be our only option. I will give the tail patterns a go and I will keep you all up to date! WildID works for my crested newts so I hope it will for the palmates!

Thanks everyone! Cheers, Tariq

To elaborate some more:

We are designing a longitudinal study encompassing two sites with a long history of Amphibiocystidium infection in palmate newts and two control sites where infections appear to be absent. The two "infected" populations have 10-12 breeding ponds each. The control sites are in the North of the Netherlands and have just a few ponds each. We hypothesise that Amphibiocystidium infections have long term negative effects on palmate newt populations in the Netherlands. To test this hypothesis we will sample each site weekly from Februari untill July (depending on the prevailing weather). With a standarized protocol newts will be caught with dipping nets and weighed (body weight) and measured (body lenght). To assess their fitness we will try to make a relation between (visible) infection and body condition (which will be derived as an index from weight and lenght). To measure survival we would like to employ capture - recapture techniques. Due to ethical considirations pitt taggs, toe clipping and elastomers are not possible. Belly patterns might be to obscure but we got a good tip that lateral tail marking can be used for photographic capture-recapture techniques in this species. During each sampling round abiotic factors like water temperature and acidity will be measured. We would like to measure reproductive output but this may be a bit more problematic. Other species that are that share the same ponds as the palmate newts will be inspected for visible lesions to see if there are any spill over effects.

Hi,

I have used pattern-mapping for a three-year mark-recapture study in alpine and smooth newts for my PhD and I have found that this method works great in both species. In alpine newts I used the lateral spot patterns on their bodies, so I believe you can successfully use the lateral patterns on the bodies or tails of your palmate newts. Wild-ID significantly helped in my case, since I had quite large populations (about 4000 captured newts). My results are not yet published, but I will be happy to be of assistance.

Best of luck!

Onoufrios

Dear Onoufrios,

Thank you so much for your very informative answer! Yes, I would really appreciate your help in this! My first question would be did you only used the left or right side per newt? I can imagine you have the choose the one or the other.

Cheers! Tariq

Dear Tariq,

Only one photo per captured individual was required to successfully identify them, so I always used the left side (for no particular reason).

Onoufrios

Thank you Onoufrios! I will try and test it with some of my captive newts. How did you restrain the animals for a good picture?

In my study I needed accurate measurements of SVL, TL and body weight, so I anesthetized captured animals to avoid excessive handling. However, depending on the study requirements, it is not always necessary to use anesthesia (if e.g. you just need one photograph of the animal) . See for example the youtube video in a previous answer, or Baker & Gent (1998) : Marking and recognition of animals, In: Herpetofauna Workers’ Manual, 45–54. I believe that with a little experimentation with your study species you will find a way to take good pictures with minimum handling time.

Sorry for the delayed answer Onoufrios and thank you for yours! We indeed need to measure and weigh animals but we do not have the ethical permits to anesthesize the animals but we can work around that. Baker & Gent, would you happend to have this paper for me (if it is available as a pdf that is of course)? Thanks again!

You can find it here:

http://jncc.defra.gov.uk/page-3325

It is chapter 4, Marking and recognition of animals.

My sincere thanks!

 Belly patterns should work

Tarik, your countrymen even invented a funny name for the restraining technique - the triturograph (triturograaf) ;-).

Note, though, that the authors of that (excellent) manual (see contribution of Onoufrios) specifically mention that palmate newts might be tricky (final paragraph of 4.3.1).

Hi Jeroen,

Apologies for the late response (I am moving to a new house with limited internet connection). I will look to the triturograaf (how aptly named, haha!). Thank you and I will keep you all up to date. Thanks to all of your contributions I have a better understanding how to tackle this question! Cheers, Tariq

Dear all,

Friday I will be in the field to capture Palmate Newts and I will photograph tails and body (lateral) and see if Wild ID makes sense of it. I will keep you up to date of this (small) pilot study.

For best results, make sure to crop all unnecessary background information before analyzing your pictures with WILD-ID. Keep only the parts of the body with the spot patterns. Good luck!

Our study will start the first of March. We have chosen to use use body patterns (lateral - leftside) and tail patterns (also the left side) like Onoufrios suggested. I am hoping the patterns will be distinct enough the be of use in this species. I have written a protocol on it and testing two programs (Wild ID and  I3S). Perhaps the latter will work better with the new "pattern"  option. Will keep you up to date.

Hi all,

Just letting you know that the results of my study regarding the application of pattern-mapping in large populations of alpine and smooth newts have just been published (online first) here: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11284-016-1346-y

I hope you'll  find it useful.

Best of luck with your study tomorrow Tariq.

Hi Onoufrios,

Fantastic, congratulations! I would very much like to read it but I don't have acces. Would it be possible to aks for a pdf? Your advise (and others) have been most useful! Due to the cold here in the Netherlands I have postponed my first field visit to next thursday. We have however started with the photo identification in Smooth Newts several days ago. We developed an app on the smart phone where data including pictures of belly/lateral patterns can be added. This data is later on uploaded to Arc GIS and referenced to a location. We are planning, if the data is usefull, to publish this in 2017. I am very sure your paper will be most usefull! Can't wait to read it!

Cheers, Tariq

Just a quick test with some lateral (left side) images in Wild ID (n=16) of Palmate newts. Pretty nice scores so far. Biased of course because I tested if images of the same individuals would be matched (mind you, made on the same day). Will be interesting to see if the patterns will hold up throughout the season. We are doing the same for lateral body patterns and ventral patterns. Oh well, all veeeeery preliminary of course! Big thanks to Onoufrios!

Seems to me that it will work nicely! Good job!

The only thing that could spoil it is if the spot patterns are not varied enough among individuals (i.e. if some individuals' patterns are very much alike). Judging by my own experience, it won't be a problem.

As for the patterns holding up throughout the season, again by my experience on alpine and smooth newts it won't be a problem. I believe that you could even repeat the fieldwork next year and still be able to match individuals captured this year.

Interesting stuff, keep us posted Tariq.

PS if I were you, I would also try cropping the pictures, leaving only the tail, and repeating the analyses with Wild-ID. The  background is unnecessary, and when your database gets to 3-digit number of pictures it might help things by improving scores and matching-ranks.

Dear all,

Short update. At the moment the tail patterns in palmate newts yield the highest results. The lateral body pattern and belly patterns far less. As soon as the season is over and I have analysed this years data I report again.

Cheers, Tariq