Mori Jameson, Rivera Nelda A, Brown William, Skinner Daniel, Schlichting Peter, Novakofski Jan, Mateus-Pinilla Nohra
Illinois Natural History Survey-Prairie Research Institute, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL 61820, USA.
Illinois Department of Natural Resources, Division of Wildlife Resources, Springfield, IL 62702, USA.
Pathogens. 2025 Aug 7;14(8):786. doi: 10.3390/pathogens14080786.
White-tailed deer () are a cervid species native to the Americas with ecological, social, and economic significance. Managers must consider several factors when working to maintain the health and sustainability of these wild herds, including reproduction, particularly pregnancy and recruitment rates. White-tailed deer have a variable reproductive capacity, with age, health, and habitat influencing this variability. However, it is unknown whether chronic wasting disease (CWD) impacts reproduction and, more specifically, if CWD infection alters a female deer's probability of pregnancy. Our study addressed this question using data from 9783 female deer culled in northern Illinois between 2003 and 2023 as part of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources' ongoing CWD management program. Multilevel Bayesian logistic regression was employed to quantify the relationship between pregnancy probability and covariates like maternal age, deer population density, and date of culling. Maternal infection with CWD was found to have no significant effect on pregnancy probability, raising concerns that the equal ability of infected and non-infected females to reproduce could make breeding, which inherently involves close physical contact, an important source of disease transmission between males and females and females and their fawns. The results also identified that female fawns (<1 year old) are sensitive to county-level deer land cover utility (LCU) and deer population density, and that there was no significant difference in how yearlings (1-2 years old) and adult (2+ years old) responded to these variables.
白尾鹿（）是一种原产于美洲的鹿科物种，具有生态、社会和经济意义。管理者在努力维持这些野生鹿群的健康和可持续性时，必须考虑几个因素，包括繁殖，特别是怀孕率和幼鹿补充率。白尾鹿的繁殖能力各不相同，年龄、健康状况和栖息地都会影响这种差异。然而，慢性消耗病（CWD）是否会影响繁殖，更具体地说，CWD感染是否会改变雌鹿的怀孕概率，目前尚不清楚。我们的研究利用2003年至2023年期间在伊利诺伊州北部作为伊利诺伊州自然资源部正在进行的CWD管理计划的一部分被扑杀的9783只雌鹿的数据，解决了这个问题。采用多水平贝叶斯逻辑回归来量化怀孕概率与诸如母鹿年龄、鹿群密度和扑杀日期等协变量之间的关系。研究发现，母鹿感染CWD对怀孕概率没有显著影响，这引发了人们的担忧，即感染和未感染的雌鹿具有同等繁殖能力，这可能使繁殖（其本身涉及密切的身体接触）成为雄性与雌性以及雌性与幼鹿之间疾病传播的一个重要来源。研究结果还表明，雌性幼鹿（<1岁）对县级鹿土地覆盖效用（LCU）和鹿群密度敏感，而一岁鹿（1 - 2岁）和成年鹿（2岁以上）对这些变量的反应没有显著差异。
