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<div> <div><strong>Spot the match – wildlife photo-identification using information theory</strong></div> </div> <div><strong></strong> </div> <div><strong>Conrad W Speed,<sup>1,</sup><sup>2</sup> Mark G Meekan,<sup>2</sup> and Corey JA Bradshaw <sup>1</sup></strong> <div> </div> <div><em><sup>1</sup>School for Environmental Research, Institute of Advanced Studies, Charles Darwin University, Darwin, Northern Territory 0909, Australia</em></div> <div><em><sup>2</sup>Australian Institute of Marine Science, P.O. Box 40197, Casuarina MC, Northern Territory 0811, Australia</em></div> </div> <div><em></em> </div> <div><span><a></a><em>Conrad W Speed: <span><a href="mailto:conrad.speed@students.cdu.edu.au">conrad.speed@students.cdu.edu.au</a></span> ; </em></span><span><a></a><em>Mark G Meekan: <span><a href="mailto:m.meekan@aims.gov.au">m.meekan@aims.gov.au</a></span> ; </em></span><span><a></a><em>Corey JA Bradshaw: <span><a href="mailto:corey.bradshaw@cdu.edu.au">corey.bradshaw@cdu.edu.au</a></span> </em></span></div> <div> <p><em></em> </p> <div><a></a></div> <div>Background</div> <div> </div> <div>Effective approaches for the management and conservation of wildlife populations require a sound knowledge of population demographics, and this is often only possible through mark-recapture studies. We applied an automated spot-recognition program (I<sup>3</sup>S) for matching natural markings of wildlife that is based on a novel information-theoretic approach to incorporate matching uncertainty. Using a photo-identification database of whale sharks (<em>Rhincodon typus</em>) as an example case, the information criterion (IC) algorithm we developed resulted in a parsimonious ranking of potential matches of individuals in an image library. Automated matches were compared to manual-matching results to test the performance of the software and algorithm. </div> <p>Results</p> <div>Validation of matched and non-matched images provided a threshold IC weight (approximately 0.2) below which match certainty was not assured. Most images tested were assigned correctly; however, scores for the by-eye comparison were lower than expected, possibly due to the low sample size. The effect of increasing horizontal angle of sharks in images reduced matching likelihood considerably. There was a negative linear relationship between the number of matching spot pairs and matching score, but this relationship disappeared when using the IC algorithm. </div> <p>Conclusion</p> <div>The software and use of easily applied information-theoretic scores of match parsimony provide a reliable and freely available method for individual identification of wildlife, with wide applications and the potential to improve mark-recapture studies without resorting to invasive marking techniques.</div> <div> </div> <div><em>Front Zool. 2007; 4: 2. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (<span>http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0</span>).</em></div> </div>
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