Schakner Zachary A, Buhnerkempe Michael G, Tennis Mathew J, Stansell Robert J, van der Leeuw Bjorn K, Lloyd-Smith James O, Blumstein Daniel T
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California Los Angeles, CA 90095-1606, USA
Fogarty International Center, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA.
Proc Biol Sci. 2016 Dec 14;283(1844). doi: 10.1098/rspb.2016.2037.
Socially transmitted wildlife behaviours that create human-wildlife conflict are an emerging problem for conservation efforts, but also provide a unique opportunity to apply principles of infectious disease control to wildlife management. As an example, California sea lions (Zalophus californianus) have learned to exploit concentrations of migratory adult salmonids below the fish ladders at Bonneville Dam, impeding endangered salmonid recovery. Proliferation of this foraging behaviour in the sea lion population has resulted in a controversial culling programme of individual sea lions at the dam, but the impact of such culling remains unclear. To evaluate the effectiveness of current and alternative culling strategies, we used network-based diffusion analysis on a long-term dataset to demonstrate that social transmission is implicated in the increase in dam-foraging behaviour and then studied different culling strategies within an epidemiological model of the behavioural transmission data. We show that current levels of lethal control have substantially reduced the rate of social transmission, but failed to effectively reduce overall sea lion recruitment. Earlier implementation of culling could have substantially reduced the extent of behavioural transmission and, ultimately, resulted in fewer animals being culled. Epidemiological analyses offer a promising tool to understand and control socially transmissible behaviours.
造成人类与野生动物冲突的社会性传播野生动物行为，对于保护工作而言是一个新出现的问题，但也提供了一个将传染病控制原则应用于野生动物管理的独特机会。例如，加利福尼亚海狮（Zalophus californianus）学会了利用邦纳维尔大坝鱼梯下方洄游成年鲑鱼的聚集，这阻碍了濒危鲑鱼的恢复。这种觅食行为在海狮种群中的扩散导致了在大坝对个别海狮进行有争议的捕杀计划，但这种捕杀的影响仍不明确。为了评估当前和替代捕杀策略的有效性，我们对一个长期数据集进行基于网络的扩散分析，以证明社会传播与大坝觅食行为的增加有关，然后在行为传播数据的流行病学模型中研究不同的捕杀策略。我们表明，当前的致死控制水平已大幅降低了社会传播率，但未能有效减少海狮的总体补充数量。更早实施捕杀本可大幅减少行为传播的程度，并最终减少被捕杀动物的数量。流行病学分析为理解和控制社会性传播行为提供了一个有前景的工具。
