Thanks a lot to those who replied to my request about using VIE in reptiles
and to everyone who supports evoldir, you're a great help!

My original post was:

Dear all,

we are planning to use Visible Implant Elastomer for individual marking in
several reptile species in Madagascar (Furcifer, Oplurus, Zonosaurus,
Tracheloptychus). As this method is mainly used in fisheries, we are
wondering if anyone has experience with using VIE in reptiles? Ideally, we
would like to test the usability of the marking in reptiles before we order
the kits, so it would be great if we can get in contact with someone who is
working with VIE in (northern) Germany?!?

I received positive feedback for several species, below are some answers:

I have used VIE on flat lizards (Platysaurus broadleyi) in South Africa,. It
worked quite well, it took a lot longer to mark each individual than toe
clipping. The study was only short term (1 month), so I don't know how
useful it is for long term, but I presume it would still be visible after a
longer time. I think it will be more successful on species that have thin
and/or transparent skin, like geckos. I injected the flat lizards on the
ventral side of their hind legs, just under the skin, because the skin was
thinest there.

We have used VIE tags on Anolis sagrei lizards for years. The method works
very well. Tags are easy to read and do not appear to cause any trauma to
the animals. We inject a small amount of elastomer subcutaneously into the
underside of each limb so that animals have a 4-color identification (e.g.,
Red-Blue-Green-Yellow). We mark hundreds of lizards each year, and we mark
animals as small as 1 g in total mass. A very small percentage of tags are
lost (they harden and presumably slip out the injection site), but this is a
minor concern. The only potential concern might be if your species have dark
or colorful ventral coloration that would make it difficult to read the
colors. Our anoles are white and have translucent skin, so it's easy to
identify each color.

One reference was also given:
Kondo, J, SJ Downes. 2004. Using Visible implant elastomer to individually
mark geckos. Herpetofauna 34:19-22.

Best of all, we did actually receive some material from France to test the
method ourselves, thanks a lot for this fantastic help!

Best,
Wiebke Berg

-- 
Wiebke Berg
University of Hamburg, Germany
+49 (0) 1734313960
wiebkeberg@web.de

wiebkeberg@googlemail.com