Toe Clipping Does Not Affect the Survival of Leopard Frogs (Rana pipiens)

Toe clipping is commonly used to identify individual frogs in mark-recapture studies. However, Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees (IACUCs) often have reservations about approving studies that include toe clipping as a way to mark animals. Previous studies indicate that recapture rates of terrestrial frogs and toads decrease with increasing numbers of toes clipped. It is not known whether these decreases are due to decreased survival rates, increased avoidance of recapture, or some other reason. The goal of this paper is to provide IACUCs with a quantitative analysis of the effects of toe clipping on survival so that they can make informed, data-based decisions when approving studies using this method, rather than basing decisions on anthropomorphic biases. We conducted a large (n = 100) laboratory experiment to determine the effects of toe clipping on the frog Rana pipiens. We found no evidence that the number of toes clipped affected either the survival rate of Leopard Frogs or the number of days that frogs survived over a 13-week period.