Foraging Eurasian badgers Meles meles and the presence of cattle in pastures. Do badgers avoid cattle?

Mullen, Enda; MacWhite, Teresa; Maher, Peter; Kelly, David; Marples, Nicola M.; Good, Margaret

doi:10.1016/j.applanim.2013.01.013

Cited by 30 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…All farms had at least one badger detection suggesting that badgers may pose a biosecurity risk at all farms surveyed. Nevertheless, we found a negative relationship between badger activity and cattle presence consistent with badgers avoiding pasture with grazing cattle (Benham & Broom, ; Mullen et al, ; Woodroffe et al, ). In contrast, badgers did not avoid and exhibited a positive association with grazing sheep.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 69%

Interspecific visitation of cattle and badgers to fomites: A transmission risk for bovine tuberculosis?

Campbell

Byrne

Menzies³

et al. 2019

Ecology and Evolution

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In Great Britain and Ireland, badgers ( Meles meles ) are a wildlife reservoir of Mycobacterium bovis and implicated in bovine tuberculosis transmission to domestic cattle. The route of disease transmission is unknown with direct, so‐called “nose‐to‐nose,” contact between hosts being extremely rare. Camera traps were deployed for 64,464 hr on 34 farms to quantify cattle and badger visitation rates in space and time at six farm locations. Badger presence never coincided with cattle presence at the same time, with badger and cattle detection at the same location but at different times being negatively correlated. Badgers were never recorded within farmyards during the present study. Badgers utilized cattle water troughs in fields, but detections were infrequent (equivalent to one badger observed drinking every 87 days). Cattle presence at badger‐associated locations, for example, setts and latrines, were three times more frequent than badger presence at cattle‐associated locations, for example, water troughs. Preventing cattle access to badger setts and latrines and restricting badger access to cattle water troughs may potentially reduce interspecific bTB transmission through reduced indirect contact.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 69%

Interspecific visitation of cattle and badgers to fomites: A transmission risk for bovine tuberculosis?

Campbell

Byrne

Menzies³

et al. 2019

Ecology and Evolution

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“…GPS and proximity logger devices have also previously been deployed on freeranging European badgers [5,7,30]. Recently, badgers have been used in captive scenarios to validate the use of accelerometers in the classification of animal…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Control of bTB in cattle is a major animal health issue in the UK with a cost of over £100 million in Great Britain during 2011 to 2012 and almost £23 million in Northern Ireland during 2010 to 2011 [2,3]. Although badgers rarely interact directly with cattle on pasture, indirect interactions -such as cattle investigating pasture contaminated with badger excrement -are thought to occur more frequently [4][5][6][7][8]. Badgers are also known to visit farm buildings and use cattle troughs [9,10].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Behaviour-time budget and functional habitat use of a free-ranging European badger(Meles meles)

et al. 2015

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Background:The European badger (Meles meles) is involved in the maintenance of bovine tuberculosis infection and onward spread to cattle. However, little is known about how transmission occurs. One possible route could be through direct contact between infected badgers and cattle. It is also possible that indirect contact between cattle and infected badger excretory products such as faeces or urine may occur either on pasture or within and around farm buildings. A better understanding of behaviour patterns in wild badgers may help to develop biosecurity measures to minimise direct and indirect contact between badgers and cattle. However, monitoring the behaviour of free-ranging badgers can be logistically challenging and labour intensive due to their nocturnal and semi-fossorial nature. We trialled a GPS and tri-axial accelerometer-equipped collar on a free-ranging badger to assess its potential value to elucidate behaviour-time budgets and functional habitat use. Results: During the recording period between 16:00 and 08:00 on a single night, resting was the most commonly identified behaviour (67.4%) followed by walking (20.9%), snuffling (9.5%) and trotting (2.3%). When examining accelerometer data associated with each GPS fix and habitat type (occurring 2 min 30 s before and after), walking was the most common behaviour in woodland (40.3%) and arable habitats (53.8%), while snuffling was the most common behaviour in pasture (61.9%). Several nocturnal resting periods were also observed. The total distance travelled was 2.28 km. Conclusions:In the present report, we demonstrate proof of principle in the application of a combined GPS and accelerometer device to collect detailed quantitative data on wild badger behaviour. Behaviour-time budgets allow us to investigate how badgers allocate energy to different activities and how this might change with disease status. Such information could be useful in the development of measures to reduce opportunities for onward transmission of bovine tuberculosis from badgers to cattle.

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“…Despite badger behaviour having been monitored extensively above‐ground, using video observation (Stewart, Ellwood & Macdonald ), and tracking with GPS (Mullen et al . ), VHF (Rosalino, Macdonald & Santos‐Reis ) and RFID (Dyo et al . ), little is known about the patterns and extent of their underground activity and chamber use, and studies tend to operate under the assumption that each individual utilises only a single chamber during diurnal sett occupation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A new Magneto‐Inductive tracking technique to uncover subterranean activity: what do animals do underground?

et al. 2015

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Summary1. Despite the importance of the subterranean ecotope, knowledge of underground movement and behaviour has been extremely limited. Previous technologies have relied upon techniques with very low spatial or temporal resolution, such as VHF telemetry. Rather incongruously, therefore, relatively simple underground activity regimes have often been assumed, with insufficient attention to the ecological importance of burrow use. 2. We test the capability of Magneto-Inductive (MI) tracking, recording underground movement within a European badger sett over a 2 week period in February. These data allowed us to: quantify subterranean movement; extrapolate the three-dimensional burrow architecture; simultaneously track multiple individuals; and establish the function of specific movement patterns; demonstrating the technique's utility. Contrasting data generated using MI tracking, against the resolution achievable with VHF tracking, we establish how sampling frequency can influence the perception of movement. 3. Taking 20 locational fixes per minute, MI collars operated for 1 year before on-board batteries failed, resulting in an average five billion data points per collar deployment. Socio-ecologically we found that rather than foraging continuously throughout the night, badgers returned to the sett an average of 2Á2 times, approximately every 3-4 h. From burrow mapping, badgers tended to use peripheral chambers for c. 45 min on these return visits. These outlying chambers were used less by day, when badgers selected deeper chambers, suggesting each chamber type fulfils a different function. This technology also exposed that badgers exhibited a far greater extent of underground movement than revealed by former technologies, which by comparison captured <0Á5% of subterranean activity. Importantly, these high-resolution data showed that individuals left, returned to, and moved about the sett independently, with no tendency for synchronous subterranean activity. 4. In overview, Magneto-Inductive tracking proved relatively simple and cost-effective to deploy, it provided very detailed and accurate subterranean fixes, and was robust enough for long-term field deployment. Furthermore, the capabilities of MI are highly transferable, enabling a better understanding of underground activity and the ecological importance of subterranean burrows for the conservation and management of a wide range of species.

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Foraging Eurasian badgers Meles meles and the presence of cattle in pastures. Do badgers avoid cattle?

Cited by 30 publications

References 25 publications

Interspecific visitation of cattle and badgers to fomites: A transmission risk for bovine tuberculosis?

Interspecific visitation of cattle and badgers to fomites: A transmission risk for bovine tuberculosis?

Behaviour-time budget and functional habitat use of a free-ranging European badger(Meles meles)

A new Magneto‐Inductive tracking technique to uncover subterranean activity: what do animals do underground?

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