Impact of fragmented habitats on persistence of wildlife diseases.

Funding Sources: USGS Wildlife: Terrestrial and Endangered Resources Program.

Collaborators: Colleen Webb and Clint Leach (Colorado State).

Disease and habitat fragmentation represent two significant threats to the persistence of wildlife populations across a landscape. How these two factors interact is poorly understood. Management and conservation approaches considering either disease or habitat structure in isolation are inadequate to capture the dynamics of the host population. Many wildlife diseases, like Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD), are able to persist for long periods of time in the environment. In a fragmented habitat, one can imagine that high-quality habitat patches might more quickly become contaminated with the pathogen. The spread of infection from these areas could transform high-quality patches from sources to sinks as a result of disease-induced mortality. In this situation, low quality patches might serve as refuges that are critical to the persistence of the host population. To investigate this situation, we are employing a suite of modeling approaches, including deterministic and stochastic patch occupancy models, as well as an individual based model. The insights offered by these models will inform management and conservation decisions, potentially highlighting the importance of low-quality habitat for the persistence of wildlife populations and the importance of high-quality habitat for the persistence of wildlife disease.