Hand grab or noose pole? Evaluating the least stressful practice for capture of endangered Turks and Caicos Rock Iguanas .

As the analysis of blood metabolites has become more readily accessible thanks to the use of point-of-care analyzers, it is now possible to evaluate stress level of wild animals directly in the field. Lactate is receiving much attention as a good stress level proxy in individuals subjected to capture, manual restraint, and data sampling in the wild, and appropriate protocols to maintain lactate values low should be preferred. In this study we compare how two different capture methodologies, hand grab noose pole, affect the variation of blood lactate values in iguanas when captured for sampling.