Habitat factors related to wild rabbit population trends after the initial impact of rabbit haemorrhagic disease

Abstract

The European wild rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) is an introduced pest species in Australia and New Zealand. Rabbits have a devastating negative impact on agricultural production and biodiversity in these countries, and Rabbit Haemorrhagic Disease (RHD) is currently included in control strategies for rabbit populations. On the other hand, the European wild rabbit is a key native prey species in the Iberian Peninsula. Since the arrival of RHD, however, rabbit populations have undergone dramatic decreases and several predator species at risk of extinction are currently dependent on the rabbit population density. Therefore, from the point of view of biodiversity conservation, evaluating habitat correlates and trends of rabbit populations after the first RHD epizootic is of great interest to improve the long-term control or promotion of wild rabbit populations. We estimated the relationship between habitat factors and long-term population trends as well as the relationships between habitat factors and rabbit abundance 2 and 14 years after the arrival of RHD in several Iberian rabbit populations. We observed that only 26% of surveyed populations seemed to experience an increase in rabbit abundance over the last 12 years and that this increase was higher in the low-rabbit-abundance areas of l992, leading to high rabbit abundance in 2004. Our results suggested that short- and long-term impacts of RHD were related to habitat quality. The initial impact of RHD was higher in more suitable habitats, but increasing long-term population trends were positively related to good habitat quality.

Mortality patterns over 3 years in a sparse population of wild rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus) in New Zealand, with an emphasis on rabbit haemorrhagic disease (RHD)

“…This would explain the lower incidence of RHD in higher rainfall areas in Australia where there is usually more vegetation available that can be used as ground cover (Henzell et al 2002). In Europe, it has been shown that that the initial impact of the disease was stronger in good quality habitats with higher rabbit densities, whereas less affected populations were those in which rabbit densities were lower before the initial spread of the virus (Calvete et al 2006).…”

Dietary shifts in two vultures after the demise of supplementary feeding stations: consequences of the EU sanitary legislation

“…In fact, we found important differences in the diet between roosts probably because the primary food source is variable (wild rabbits in one case, and ungulate carcasses and garbage in the other two studied cases). Moreover, the large population decline in wild rabbits in the study area during the last decade was caused by rabbit haemorrhagic disease (Villafuerte et al 1995) may also have contributed to the observed variability since rabbit populations have recovered only partially, showing important spatial variations in density (Calvete et al 2006).…”

Effectiveness of habitat management in the recovery of low-density populations of wild rabbit

“…Latrine counts have been used widely as an indirect and easy-to-implement method to estimate rabbit abundance (Virgós et al 2003;Calvete et al 2006;Beja et al 2007Beja et al , 2008Sarmento et al 2012). However, recent investigations have shown some limitations in latrine counts to estimate wild rabbit abundance, mainly in regional wild rabbit monitoring programs (Fernandez-de-Simon et al 2011).…”