Exploring artificial habitat fragmentation to control invasion by infectious wildlife diseases.

Autor: Bozzuto C; Wildlife Analysis GmbH, Oetlisbergstrasse 38, 8053 Zurich, Switzerland. Electronic address: bozzuto@wildlifeanalysis.ch., Canessa S; Wildlife Health Ghent, Department of Pathology, Bacteriology and Avian Diseases, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Ghent University, Salisburylaan 133, 9820 Merelbeke, Belgium., Koella JC; Laboratory of ecology and epidemiology of parasites, Institute of Biology, University of Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Theoretical population biology [Theor Popul Biol] 2021 Oct; Vol. 141, pp. 14-23. Date of Electronic Publication: 2021 Jun 15.
DOI: 10.1016/j.tpb.2021.06.001
Abstrakt: One way to reduce the impacts of invading wildlife diseases is setting up fences that would reduce the spread of pathogens by limiting connectivity, similarly to exclusion fences that are commonly used to conserve threatened species against invasive predators. One of the problems with fences is that, while they may have the short-term benefit of impeding the spread of disease, this benefit may be offset by potential long-term ecological costs of fragmentation by fencing. However, managers facing situations where a pathogen has been detected near the habitat of a (highly) vulnerable species may be willing to explore such a trade-off. To aid such exploration quantitatively, we present a series of models trading off the benefits of fragmentation (potential reduction of disease impacts on susceptible individuals) against its costs (both financial and ecological, i.e. reduced viability in the patches created by fragmentation), and exploring the effects of fragmentation on non-target species richness. For all model variants we derive the optimal number of artificial patches. We show that pre-emptive disease fences may have benefits when the risk of disease exceeds the impacts of fragmentation, when fence failure rates are lower than a specific threshold, and when sufficient resources are available to implement optimal solutions. A useful step to initiate planning is to obtain information about the expected number of initial infection events and on the host's extinction threshold with respect to the focal habitat and management duration. Our approach can assist managers to identify whether the trade-offs support the decision to fence and how intensive fragmentation should be.
Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
(Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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