Photo Id

The spotted eagle ray is an iconic species for the recreational diving and snorkeling industry in the Mexican Caribbean although it is heavily fished in nearby waters of the southern Gulf of Mexico and in Cuba. This species is listed on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species as 'Near Threatened' with a decreasing population trend. Few studies have reported on the populations and migrations of spotted eagle rays in the Atlantic Ocean, Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea, and no regulations currently exist for the fishery or tourism industries in Mexico. Photographic identification techniques were used to produce the first photo-ID catalog of spotted eagle rays in the Mexican Caribbean using 1096 photographs submitted by researchers and divers between 2003 and 2016. In total, 282 individual spotted eagle rays were identified through photographs at nine sites across the Mexican Caribbean. Of these individuals, 14.9% were resighted at least once at the same site. The longest period between re-sighting events was 342 days. This is the first study evaluating free-swimming spotted eagle rays in the Mexican Caribbean and highlights the value of using photo-ID for monitoring populations of this ray. Because a targeted subsistence fishery for spotted eagle rays exists in nearby waters, management efforts to monitor and prevent overexploitation at key diving locations should be a priority for local government agencies.

The potential for long distance movements of common bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) from six UK and Irish study sites was examined using photographs of natural markings. Here we provide the first evidence for long-term re-sightings between the Moray Firth, Inner Hebrides and across international borders to the Republic of Ireland as established for eight individuals over a ten year period, from 2001 to 2010. Minimum dispersal distances of up to 1,277km were determined, providing a new distance record for the species in European waters. Although none of the sightings were made within protected areas, several were made in waters used by animals from a Special Area of Conservation (SAC) revealing some evidence for connectivity between areas previously regarded as discrete. Our findings highlight the need to mitigate broader-scale anthropogenic impacts affecting these dolphins across multiple sites throughout their coastal range. Accordingly, we underline the importance of developing wider conservation measures for this species in UK and Irish waters, but particularly in identified corridor areas potentially linking core SACs in the Moray Firth, Cardigan Bay and Shannon Estuary.

The population structure of humpback whales (Megaplera novaeangliae) in the North Pacific has received significant attention in recent years through the collaborative Structure of Populations, Levels of Abundance, and Status of Humpback whales in the North Pacific (SPLASH) study. However, the analysis of humpback whales in the western North Pacific Asian population was limited in the SPLASH study, due to small sample size. Much of the Asian population summers off Kamchatka, Russia and spends the winters in breeding grounds in Okinawa and Ogasawara, Japan and the Babuyan Islands in the northern Philippines. Prior studies grouped the Commander Islands feeding ground in Russia, with the eastern Aleutian Islands as part of the central humpback whale stock. This paper uses additional years of photo-ID data from both the Philippines (160 whales from 2000-12) and the Commander Islands (531 whales from 2008-10) to establish a previously unreported migratory connection by matching four anima...

The interchange of individual humpback whales between the wintering grounds of Oceania (South Pacific) and the east coast of Australia were documented by individual identification photographs collected from 1999 to 2004. Interchange was assessed using regional catalogues of fluke photographs, totalling 672 individuals from Oceania (represented by New Zealand, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Niue, Cook Island, French Polynesia and American Samoa) and 1,242 individuals from Hervey and Byron Bay representing the southbound and the northbound migration along the east coast of Australia (EA). Overall, there were seven documented movements between EA and Oceania. Four instances of movement of four individuals were documented between EA and the closest breeding grounds of New Caledonia. A further three movements were recorded between EA and a small catalogue (n = 13) from the New Zealand migratory corridor. In contrast, during this same period, 20 cases of interchange were docu...

In the presence of naturally occurring variegated markings allowing individual identification, photo-identification (photo-ID) can be used as a non-intrusive and relatively inexpensive methodological alternative to artificial marking techniques commonly applied in mark-recapture-studies. Yet, for a large number of species of the most diverse group of lizards, the geckos, individual identification based on photographs was not possible because no such naturally occurring markings had yet been identified. Recently however, a study demonstrated the possibility of using the individual iris pattern to photo-identify nocturnal geckos of the genus Tarentola, using the freely available pattern matching software Interactive Individual Identification System (I³S). Our study was aimed at assessing the feasibility of using I³S for the iris photo-ID of gecko species with a more complex iris patterns than the genus Tarentola and, to compare the efficiency of the I³S Classic and the recently released I³S Contour in matching photos of known specimens.

Our study species was the Amazonian Turnip-tailed gecko Thecadactylus rapicauda, the largest Neotropical gekkonid, and fieldwork was conducted at the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project, Central Amazon, Brazil. Using a library of 59 photos from 29 individuals we have found that, contingent to minor adjustments to the previously described methodology, both I³S Classic and I³S Contour can be used for the iris photo-ID of T. rapicauda. The matching efficiency, assessed by comparing the matching rank of photos of known specimens, differed between I³S Classic and I³S Contour softwares (Wilcoxon signed-rank test W = 1278.5; P < 0.01) and whereas I³S Classic correctly matched 92% of the photos in the 1st rank, for I³S Contour this figure was only 68%. Also, when using I³S Classic the worse ranked photo of a known specimen occupied the 5th position, contrasting to the 21st occupied by the worse ranked photo of a known specimen using I³S Contour.
Iris photo-ID can therefore be used in gecko species with relatively complex iris patterns and we argue that this technique is more ethically acceptable and circumvents several ecological and logistical constraints associated with artificial marking techniques available for the study of gekkonid lizards.