About
This project outfitted terra cotta planter bases (AKA madtom hotels), with RFID readers to evalute the potential to use these enhanced madtom hotels to monitor cryptic madomt species. This project has application to fish conservation, in particular, madtoms can be tagged and stocked as part of conservation aquaculture operations. The tagged fish can then be deteced again with minimal effort by placing RFID enhanced madtom hotels at stocking locations. Results of the study indicate that use of hotels, indexed by hotel occupancy (i.e., detection of a tagged fish in the hotel) and number of unique tagged fish detected were related to the known madtom density especially at lower densities. The RFID enhanced madtom hotels also allows the potential to look at interactions among indviduals and cover use to investigate behaviour.
Article (Open access)
Schumann DA, Colvin ME, Campbell RL, Wagner MD, Schwarz DE Suitability of passive integrated transponder tags and a new monitoring technique for at-risk madtoms (Noturus spp.) ESR 44:1-10 PDF
Abstact
Representative indices of population abundance for at-risk species are necessary to inform conservation decision-making. Many madtom species Noturus spp. are considered imperiled; however, the efficacy of frequent monitoring efforts has been questioned due to their cryptic and nocturnal behaviors. We systematically evaluated a madtom monitoring tool by: (1) evaluating the use of small (8 x 2 mm), surgically implanted 125 kHz passive integrated transponder (PIT) tags for frecklebelly madtom Noturus munitus and (2) assessing the effectiveness of an RFID-enhanced artificial cover unit to index madtom abundance. Surgically implanted PIT tags had no apparent influence on madtom survival between 45-110 mm total length and all tags were retained throughout a 21-d laboratory study. In experimental mesocosms, the enhanced cover units confirmed occupancy during nearly all replicates (77.6%), even at extremely low densities (n = 2 madtoms). The enhanced cover units provided representative estimates of madtom relative abundance (F1, 29 = 16.3, p < 0.01, r2 = 0.36); however, catch per unit effort was not significantly associated with previously validated visual observations (F1,16 = 2.7, p = 0.12). Although madtom density and the number detected using the enhanced cover units were correlated, the gear was potentially saturated at relatively high densities (~20 fish per mesocosm) when deploying a single unit. In most cases, occupancy was confirmed within 12 h and nearly half of the individuals were detected within ~72 h. Small PIT tags and RFID-enhanced artificial cover units offer novel opportunities to efficiently describe the ecology and population dynamics of patterned madtoms.