YET more evidence has emerged of researchers inadvertently harming the animals they study in the wild.
The results suggest that radio-collars used to track water voles have had a drastic effect on the sex ratio of their offspring, skewing it towards males. Previous studies have found that tagging penguin wings and clipping amphibians’ toes to identify individuals harm the animals’ survival chances (Â鶹´«Ã½, 7 August 2004, p 15).
Tom Moorhouse and David MacDonald at the University of Oxford made the latest discovery by accident, while studying two populations of water vole (Arvicola terrestris). In the first two…
