Nasal Discs and the Vital Rates of Lesser Scaup

Nasal discs have been used to identify ducks in studies of survival and reproduction. To date, there has not been a comprehensive assessment of nasal-disc effects on the vital rates of wild ducks. We applied nasal discs to 603 juvenile and 784 adult lesser scaup (Aythya affinis) females from a population breeding in southwest Montana, USA, and released 1,399 juvenile and 71 adult females wearing only metal leg bands between June 2005 and September 2016. Using resighting, recapture, and hunter-recovery data collected from those individuals, we estimated survival and recovery probability with multistate capture-recapture models in Program MARK. We also assessed if recovery distance from our study site and pre-breeding and brood-rearing body condition were diminished for females wearing nasal discs. Model-averaged survival probabilities were 0.231 ± 0.035 (SE) for juveniles and 0.482 ± 0.019 for adults released with nasal discs. Survival was 1.8–3.4 times higher for females released with metal leg bands when compared to those released with nasal discs; survival of these juveniles was 0.433 ± 0.049 and 0.693 ± 0.039 for adults. We did not find evidence for recovery probability or recovery distance varying between females that wore nasal discs and those that did not. During the pre-breeding and brood-rearing seasons, we did not find females wearing nasal discs to be in lower body condition when compared to unmarked females. Our comprehensive assessment of nasal discs on wild lesser scaup suggests that survival probabilities estimated from nasal-marked study populations should be cautiously interpreted as minimum estimates. © 2021 The Wildlife Society.