Colorado Division of Wildlife, Wildlife Research Center, Fort Collins, CO 80526-2097, USA.
Biol Lett. 2010 Apr 23;6(2):209-11. doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2009.0742. Epub 2009 Oct 28.
The possibility that predators choose prey selectively based on age or condition has been suggested but rarely tested. We examined whether mountain lions (Puma concolor) selectively prey upon mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) infected with chronic wasting disease, a prion disease. We located kill sites of mountain lions in the northern Front Range of Colorado, USA, and compared disease prevalence among lion-killed adult (> or =2 years old) deer with prevalence among sympatric deer taken by hunters in the vicinity of kill sites. Hunter-killed female deer were less likely to be infected than males (odds ratios (OR) = 0.2, 95% confidence intervals (CI) = 0.1-0.6; p = 0.015). However, both female (OR = 8.5, 95% CI = 2.3-30.9) and male deer (OR = 3.2, 95% CI = 1-10) killed by a mountain lion were more likely to be infected than same-sex deer killed in the vicinity by a hunter (p < 0.001), suggesting that mountain lions in this area actively selected prion-infected individuals when targeting adult mule deer as prey items.
捕食者根据年龄或健康状况有选择性地捕食猎物的可能性已经被提出，但很少得到验证。我们研究了山狮（Puma concolor）是否会有选择地捕食感染慢性消耗病（一种朊病毒病）的骡鹿（Odocoileus hemionus）。我们在美国科罗拉多州北部的前山脉找到了山狮的捕杀地点，并比较了狮子捕杀的成年（≥2 岁）鹿中疾病的流行率与捕杀地点附近猎人捕杀的同域鹿中的流行率。与雄性相比，被狮子捕杀的雌性鹿感染的可能性较小（比值比（OR）=0.2，95%置信区间（CI）=0.1-0.6；p=0.015）。然而，无论是被狮子捕杀的雌性（OR=8.5，95%CI=2.3-30.9）还是雄性鹿（OR=3.2，95%CI=1-10），其感染的可能性都高于在附近被猎人捕杀的同性别鹿（p<0.001），这表明在该地区，山狮在捕食成年骡鹿时会积极选择感染朊病毒的个体。
