Interspecific visitation of cattle and badgers to fomites: A transmission risk for bovine tuberculosis?
Date
2019-07-09
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Publisher
Wiley
Abstract
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.
Description
Publication history: Accepted - 23 April 2019
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Article
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Keywords
camera trapping, disease ecology, meles meles, mycobacterium bovis, surveillance, wildlife-livestock interface
Citation
Campbell, E. L., Byrne, A. W., Menzies, F. D., McBride, K. R., McCormick, C. M., Scantlebury, M. and Reid, N. (2019) ‘Interspecific visitation of cattle and badgers to fomites: A transmission risk for bovine tuberculosis?’, Ecology and Evolution. Wiley, 9(15), pp. 8479–8489. doi: 10.1002/ece3.5282.