Tag: badgers

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Exploring the One Health Initiative in the Irish context

Last week, the Zoology department hosted the first Irish One Health workshop, welcoming speakers and attendees from a range of disciplines. This gathering provided an opportunity to discuss the One Health initiative, which aims to solve world health problems through transdisciplinary collaboration, through a series of short presentations discussing various aspects of global health, and ample time for discussion between attendees, including representatives from the DAFM, EPA, HSE and AFBI.

Our own Dr Peter Stuart, who organised this workshop, gave a fascinating introduction to the concept of One Health, using the example of Hookworm in the American South during the 20th century as proof that we need to work collaboratively to solve current health issues.

Photo credit: @Horse_Techie Continue reading “Exploring the One Health Initiative in the Irish context”

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Badgery Fieldwork

cuddle time

One of the best things about my PhD has got to be the fieldwork. My project involves analysing the GPS data of a population of badgers to find out where they forage, how big their territories are, who lives with whom and how they disperse. This means putting GPS collars on them twice a year. Badgers have a bit of a bad rep, one they really don’t deserve. Contrary to popular opinion they are not vicious beasts that, once clamped on to your foot, won’t let go until they hear the bones crack (people say this to me a lot). They are in fact quite timid and very cute with it! Continue reading “Badgery Fieldwork”

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Do badgers play Friesian tag?

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While there is irrefutable evidence for the transfer of bovine TB between badgers and cattle, the mechanisms of transfer are not clearly documented. In order to reduce such transfer, it is obviously important to understand how infection takes place.

With such questions in mind, data from a study of free-ranging badgers was combined with detailed records of paddock use by cattle. Each study badger was carrying a personal GPS unit on a tailored collar, so their movements could be monitored to within a few meters. The paddock use of the cattle was recorded on a daily basis. The data were combined, using mapping software, such that a daily log could be constructed for badger and cattle activity. Continue reading “Do badgers play Friesian tag?”

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Another piece in the trophic puzzle

Meles.meles

The food chain is a concept that many non-biologists are familiar with. Ecologically-speaking, this should be referred to as a food web, because there is rarely one prey species for a given predator or one predator of any given species.

The biochemistry of metabolism and digestion means we can reconstruct the diet of a member of a given food web with some basic information about the stable isotopes in its tissues and the stable isotope values of the available prey. Simply put, “you are what you eat”. Carbon isotopes generally reflect the “where” of the diet and nitrogen isotopes generally indicate the “what”.

This overview omits several complications. Firstly, the calculation of diet requires a “conversion factor” (trophic enrichment factor or TEF) for any given tissue of an animal. Animal metabolisms tend to retain 15N, so consumers have greater 15N:14N ratios than their prey. Secondly, each tissue is likely to have a different TEF, as it is made to perform a different job in the animal. Thirdly, TEFs can only be derived by feeding animals highly controlled diets, ideally a single food for the length of time it takes for the study tissue to be fully replaced. In the case of teeth and bone, this can be months or even years.

As there are relatively few TEFs available for animal species, many ecologists “borrow” TEFs from other species for their calculations. Having derived TEFs for carbon and nitrogen in badger blood serum, a tissue that is completely replaced several times a month, we demonstrated that badger TEFs differ from fox TEFs. This is important, as foxes are similar in size to badgers and have a similar feeding ecology, and ecologists might be tempted to “borrow” fox TEFs to use in badger studies.

So knowing more about the biochemistry of badgers (in the form of TEFs) will allow us to learn more about their diets. This may be of importance to farmers planning biosecurity measures for their farms, as they will be able to learn if badgers are raiding their crops (in the field or in the barn). It will also help identify when badgers are specialising on different foods and potentially allow farmers to minimise contact between badgers and livestock.

Authors

David Kelly: djkelly[at]tcd.ie

Nicola Marples

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