Movements and habitat preferences of pests help to improve population control: the case of common brushtail possums in a New Zealand dryland ecosystem

详细信息    查看全文

• 作者：Carlos Rouco ; Grant L Norbury and Dean P Anderson
• 刊名：Pest Management Science
• 出版年：2017
• 出版时间：February 2017
• 年：2017
• 卷：73
• 期：2
• 页码：287-294
• 全文大小：410K
• ISSN：1526-4998

文摘

Introduced brushtail possums are controlled in New Zealand to mitigate their spread of bovine tuberculosis in livestock. Given the low rainfall and extreme variation in seasonal temperatures in dryland areas of the South Island, the habitats of possums in these areas differ in many respects from those in the rest of New Zealand. We investigated the movements and habitat preferences of possums at two dryland sites to identify where they aggregate following population control by using GPS collars and cards chewed by possums. At one site, possum numbers were reduced from high levels by 65%, and at the other site, possums had already been reduced to low levels for some time beforehand but were further reduced to maintain them at low levels. This resulted in different possum densities.