|
|
||||||||
1 Colorado Division of Wildlife, Wildlife Research Center, 317 West Prospect Road, Fort Collins, Colorado 80526-2097, USA
2 Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado 80523, USA
3 Department of Forest, Range, and Wildlife Sciences, Utah State University, Logan, Utah 84322, USA
4 Corresponding author (email: mike.miller{at}state.co.us)
| ABSTRACT |
|---|
|
|
|---|
| INTRODUCTION |
|---|
|
|
|---|
Chronic wasting disease (CWD) (Williams and Young, 1980), a contagious prion disease of deer and wapiti (Cervus elaphus nelsoni), has emerged as an important wildlife health problem in several parts of North America (Williams and Miller, 2002; Williams et al., 2002). Clinical signs of CWD include subtle changes in behavior that are often unrecognizable in early stages. Desensitization to external stimuli and poor body condition become progressively worse in later stages (Williams and Young, 1992). Abnormal behavior and deterioration of body condition are the most apparent clinical signs of end-stage CWD in deer (Williams and Young, 1980, 1992). Affected animals may show repetitive behaviors or periods of somnolence or depression and may carry their ears and head lowered; various combinations of uncoordination, stumbling, trembling, and hyper-excitability are also displayed (Williams et al., 2002). It follows that CWD-infected deer and elk in later disease stages could be more likely to be struck by vehicles because they are less able to recognize, to avoid, or to respond to vehicles. Here, we investigated whether mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) infected with CWD might be more susceptible to vehicle collisions by comparing prevalence among vehicle-killed deer to prevalence among sympatric deer from the same geographic location.
| MATERIALS AND METHODS |
|---|
|
|
|---|
|
1-yr-old mule deer randomly sampled in conjunction with other surveillance, management, and research programs to estimate local CWD prevalence in the vicinity of sampled deer-vehicle collision sites (hereafter referred to as "vicinity-sampled"); we included only samples with corresponding UTM data in analyses. Sources of tissue samples included mule deer killed by hunters from September 1996 to December 2003 (Miller et al., 2000; Miller and Conner, 2005; Colorado Division of Wildlife, unpubl. data), apparently healthy mule deer culled by wildlife managers from December 2001 to December 2003 (Colorado Division of Wildlife, unpubl. data), and mule deer captured and tonsil biopsied from March 2001 to December 2003 (Wolfe et al., 2002, 2004; L. L. Wolfe and M. W. Miller, unpubl. data). For both vehicle-killed and vicinity-sampled deer, diagnostic methods were as described elsewhere (Miller et al., 2000; Miller and Williams, 2002; Wolfe et al., 2002; Hibler et al., 2003). Sampled mule deer were classified as CWD-positive (=infected) or -negative (=uninfected) on the basis of immunohistochemical (IHC) exam of retropharyngeal lymph node or tonsil tissue (Miller and Williams, 2002). Where appropriate tissue was available, histopathology was performed on brain tissue to determine the presence of spongiform encephalopathy (Williams and Young, 1980, 1993) as an index of disease progression (Miller and Williams, 2002; Spraker et al., 2002). We regarded CWD-positive deer with evidence of spongiform encephalopathy as being in relatively late stages of disease, as compared with positive deer without such lesions (Miller and Williams, 2002). Because IHC and histopathology methods and their interpretation did not change materially over the period when samples were collected, and because most samples (92% of vehicle-kill and 77% of vicinity) were collected from 2001 to 2004, we assumed the foregoing diagnostic criteria to be constant for analysis purposes.
To assess differential vulnerability to vehicle collisions, we compared CWD prevalence among vehicle-killed deer with prevalence among deer sampled in the vicinity of these vehicle-killed deer. Because data from symptomatic animals are highly biased (Miller et al., 2000), we initially excluded emaciated deer and deer showing other signs of CWD from both the vehicle-kill and vicinity data sets before analysis. Then, because previous analyses revealed demographic and spatial influences on CWD prevalence (Miller and Conner, 2005), we used model selection (Burnham and Anderson, 2002) to select an appropriate model representing prevalence patterns in vicinity sample and vehicle-kill data as a basis for making comparisons of vehicle-killed and vicinity prevalence. We used Akaikes Information Criterion (AIC; Akaike, 1973) corrected for small sample bias (AICc) to rank models and select an appropriate "best-approximating" model for these data (Burnham and Anderson, 2002). Explanatory models included age (1 vs.
2 yr old), sex, and DAU in various combinations representing potential demographic (sex, age) and spatial (DAU) influences on prevalence. The model (sex+age+DAU) was best by 10 and 1
AIC units for vicinity and vehicle-killed samples, respectively; consequently, we used only data from adult (
2 yr old) mule deer to minimize age effects on estimated prevalence and made separate comparisons for males and females in each sampled DAU. Because sample distribution was similar across seasons (83% of vehicle kills and 86% of vicinity samples were collected during fall and winter), we assumed no seasonal basis for potential differences between vehicle-kill and vicinity data.
Within the bounds of the foregoing criteria, we used all adult (
2-yr-old) vehicle-killed mule deer sampled, provided that at least one vicinity sample had been collected within a 3 km radius of the vehicle-killed deer. We used a 3-km radius because a previous study of mule deer winter home range movements showed that 96% of movements made by radiocollared deer were
6 km during core winter months when there was no migration (Conner and Miller, 2004). On the basis of these criteria, data from 171 vehicle-killed mule deer (90 males and 81 females) were included in our analyses. For comparison, we used data from 2,317 deer (1,204 males and 1,113 females) sampled within a 3-km radius of vehicle-killed deer. We estimated CWD prevalence among vehicle-killed deer and vicinity-sampled deer as a proportion (CWD-positive samples/total samples) and calculated the relative risk and 95% confidence interval (CI) (Agresti, 1996) for each DAUxsex comparison.
We also calculated the relative risk and 95% CI for occurrence of spongiform encephalopathy among 20 CWD-positive deer killed by vehicles, as compared with 180 CWD-positive, randomly sampled deer where appropriate tissue samples were available for histopathology; case selection criteria were as previously described, except that the set of positive adult deer used in this comparison included but was not limited to those sampled in the vicinity of collision sites. We estimated rates of spongi-form encephalopathy among vehicle-killed deer and other positive deer as a proportion (cases with lesions/total cases) and calculated the relative risk and 95% CI (Agresti, 1996).
| RESULTS |
|---|
|
|
|---|
|
| DISCUSSION |
|---|
|
|
|---|
The relatively high rate of spongiform encephalopathy among CWD-infected mule deer killed by vehicles is also consistent with disease-related influences on vulnerability to collisions. Altered behaviors (Williams and Young, 1980; Williams and Miller, 2002) that could render deer more vulnerable to collisions become more apparent through the disease course as damage to brain tissue accumulates. Although deer behavior cannot be assessed postmortem, progression of CWD can be staged, at least broadly, through immunohistochemistry and histopathology (Miller et al., 2000; Miller and Williams, 2002; Spraker et al. 2002). Accumulations of CWD-associated abnormal prion protein (PrPCWD) are detectable in lymphoid tissue months before detection in brain tissue (Sigurdson et al., 2002; Williams and Miller, 2002) and well in advance of the development of clinical signs of CWD (Wild et al., 2002; Williams and Miller, 2002). In contrast, observations from an experimental study of CWD pathogenesis in orally inoculated mule deer (Williams and Miller, 2002; E. S. Williams and M. W. Miller, unpubl. data) suggested that the appearance of spongiform encephalopathy in sacrificed deer coincided roughly with the onset of subtle clinical signs
15 mo after inoculation in surviving individuals. It follows that a somewhat higher proportion of the vehicle-killed deer in our sample may have been suffering from some degree of clinical CWD and thus more vulnerable to collisions.
If CWD-infected deer are more susceptible to death by vehicle collision, as suggested by our data, then it seems logical that infected deer may also be more vulnerable to other forms of mortality such as predation. The knowledge that CWD-infected deer may be more vulnerable to vehicle collisions needs to be considered in studying selective predation, and any evidence of "selection" needs to be interpreted in the context of likely increased vulnerability. Alternatively, because increased vulnerability may foster selective predation, our findings lend some support to the notion that large coursing predators like wolves (Canis lupus) could be effective at removing a greater proportion of infected deer from an affected population than random removal via harvest.
Previous studies have suggested that bias may occur in CWD prevalence data from surveillance of hunter-killed deer (Conner et al., 2000) and from "targeted" surveillance (Miller et al., 2000); in both cases, it appeared that bias may have been due to behavioral differences between infected and uninfected deer. On the basis of our findings, abnormal behavior or compromised alertness of infected individuals also may affect the likelihood of being killed by a vehicle collision. Consequently, the potential for bias should be considered before using data from vehicle-killed deer in estimating CWD prevalence. Because original epidemiological studies of CWD in free-ranging mule deer (Miller et al., 2000) assumed that vehicle-killed and harvested animals had equal probabilities of being infected with CWD, some early prevalence estimates may have been biased high relative to true prevalence in affected deer populations. In light of our findings, it seems possible that biases also could arise in data from surveys based on hunting with "primitive weapons" (e.g., long bow, muzzle-loaded rifle), and this potential bias may merit further investigation.
Although problematic in studying CWD epidemiology, the tendency toward bias in prevalence among vehicle-killed deer (Table 1
) could be exploited in designing more cost-effective surveys to detect new foci of CWD in free-ranging populations (Table 2
). Our data show that the CWD detection probability per animal sampled tends to be higher than for other, more random methods of surveillance such as those based on sampling harvested deer. Because vehicle-killed deer may have a greater probability of being infected with CWD than the population as a whole, fewer samples would be needed to detect at least one CWD-positive deer in an affected target population. In general, surveillance targeting a smaller population subset with relatively high CWD prevalence may be a more efficient detection strategy than sampling the entire population (Miller et al., 2000; Samuel et al., 2003). The efficiency gained through surveillance focused on vehicle-killed deer depends on the ratio of the proportion of the CWD-infected population that is vehicle-killed to the proportion of the entire population that is vehicle-killed (Samuel et al., 2003).
|
99% detection probability in target populations of differing sizes, given underlying CWD prevalence at various levels. For illustration, we used field data from three populations: Estes Park Valley, a relatively small mule deer population residing in and around the town of Estes Park, Colorado; DAU D-4, an intermediate-sized mule deer population residing in northern Larimer County, Colorado (Fig. 1A, BOur findings suggest that by sampling vehicle-killed deer, fewer samples would be required in most cases to detect at least one CWD-infected animal than if sampling relied on harvested deer. It follows that the efficiency of surveillance programs with a goal of detecting new CWD foci might be improved by emphasizing approaches that include vehicle-killed deer sampled opportunistically, provided that the size of the vehicle-killed subpopulation is estimable and that such sampling is geographically representative of target populations. Under such approaches, managers must recognize that the assumption of random sampling (equal probability of being sampled between hunter-harvested animals and vehicle-killed animals) is not valid. In addition to improving surveillance efficiency, surveying vehicle-killed deer may be an effective way to identify local areas of relatively high prevalence that could be targeted for management interventions in the face of marked heterogeneity in the geographic distribution of CWD in affected mule deer populations (Wolfe et al., 2002; Conner and Miller, 2004). Although surveying vehicle-killed deer may not yield as many samples as could be obtained via harvest surveys, the former offers year-round surveillance as compared with approaches restricted to relatively brief hunting seasons. Vehicle-kill surveillance could be particularly effective in areas where hunting is limited because of urban development or other constraints. Understanding biases associated with this and other CWD surveillance methods (Conner et al., 2000; Miller et al., 2000; Samuel et al. 2003) should allow managers to use the most efficient and effective combination of techniques to achieve jurisdiction-specific surveillance goals.
The epidemiology of CWD is incompletely understood. However, it is clear that the agent can persist in the environment, and that even decomposed carcasses can be sources of infection (Miller et al., 2004). Therefore, transport and disposal of infected vehicle-killed deer and elk carcasses should be carefully considered to minimize opportunities for spreading CWD. Furthermore, sites where CWD-infected deer have been killed by vehicles but remained in the environment should be monitored as possible areas of emergent CWD foci.
| ACKNOWLEDGMENTS |
|---|
| LITERATURE CITED |
|---|
|
|
|---|
AKAIKE, H. 1973. Information theory as an extension of the maximum likelihood principle. In Second International Symposium on Information Theory, B. N. Petrov and F. Csaki (eds.). Akademiai Kiado, Budapest, Hungary, pp. 267281.
BELLIS, E. D., AND H. B. GRAVES. 1971. Deer mortality on a Pennsylvania interstate highway. Journal of Wildlife Management 35: 232237.
BURNHAM, K. P., AND D. R. ANDERSON. 2002. Model selection and multimodel inference: A practical information-theoretic approach, 2nd Edition. Springer-Verlag, New York, New York, 488 pp.
CLEVENGER, A. P., B. CHRUZCZ, K. GUNSON, AND J. WIERZCHOWSKI. 2002. Roads and wildlife in the Canadian mountain parksMovements, mortality and mitigation. Final Report to Parks Canada. Banff, Alberta, Canada. 100 pp.
COCHRAN, W. G. 1977. Sampling techniques. 3rd Edition. John Wiley & Sons, New York, New York, 428 pp.
CONNER, M. M., C. W. MCCARTY, AND M. W. MILLER. 2000. Detection of bias in harvest-based estimates of chronic wasting disease prevalence in mule deer. Journal of Wildlife Diseases 36: 691699.[Abstract]
CONNER, M. M., AND M. W. MILLER. 2004. Movement patterns and spatial epidemiology of a prion disease in mule deer population units. Ecological Applications 14: 18701881.
DUSEK, G. L., R. J. MACKIE, J. D. HERRIGES, JR., AND B. B. COMPTON. 1989. Population ecology of white-tailed deer along the lower Yellowstone River. Wildlife Monographs 104: 168.
FORMAN, R. T. T. 2003. Road ecologyScience and solutions. Island Press, Washington, D.C., 481 pp.
GOODWIN, G. A., AND A. L. WARD. 1976. Mule deer mortality on Interstate 80 in Wyoming: causes, patterns and recommendations. USDA Forest Service Research Note RM-332. Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station, Fort Collins, Colorado, pp. 14.
HIBLER, C. P., K. L. WILSON, T. R. SPRAKER, M. W. MILLER, R. R. ZINK, L. L. DEBUSE, E. ANDERSEN, D. SCHWEITZER, J. A. KENNEDY, L. A. BAETEN, J. F. SMELTZER, M. D. SALMAN, AND B. E. POWERS. 2003. Field validation and assessment of an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay for detecting chronic wasting disease in mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus), white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), and Rocky Mountain elk (Cervus elaphus nelsoni). Journal of Veterinary Diagnostic Investigation 15: 311319.
JAHN, L. R. 1959. Highway mortality as an index of deer population change. Journal of Wildlife Management 2: 187196.
MANSFIELD, T. M., AND B. D. MILLER. 1975. Highway deer-kill district 02 regional study. Caltrans internal report. Sacramento, California, 49 pp.
MILLER, M. W., AND M. M. CONNER. 2005. Epidemiology of chronic wasting disease in free-ranging mule deer: spatial, temporal, and demographic influences on observed prevalence patterns. Journal of Wildlife Diseases 41: 275290.
, AND E. S. WILLIAMS. 2002. Detecting PrPCWD in mule deer by immunohistochemistry of lymphoid tissues. Veterinary Record 151: 610612.
, , N. T. HOBBS, AND L. L. WOLFE. 2004. Environmental sources of prion transmission in mule deer. Emerging Infectious Diseases 10: 10031006.[Medline]
, , C. W. MCCARTY, T. R. SPRAKER, T. J. KREEGER, C. T. LARSEN, AND E. T. THORNE. 2000. Epizootiology of chronic wasting disease in free-ranging cervids in Colorado and Wyoming. Journal of Wildlife Diseases 36: 676690.[Abstract]
MYERS, G. T. 1969. Deer-auto accidents: Serious business. Colorado Outdoors 18: 3840.
REEVE, A. F., AND S. H. ANDERSON. 1993. Ineffectiveness of swareflex reflectors at reducing deer-vehicle collisions. Wildlife Society Bulletin 21: 127132.
REILLY, R. E., AND H. E. GREEN. 1974. Deer mortality on a Michigan interstate highway. Journal of Wildlife Management 38: 1619.
ROMIN, L. A., AND J. A. BISSONETTE. 1996. Temporal and spatial distribution of highway mortality of mule deer on newly constructed roads at Jordanelle Reservoir, Utah. Great Basin Naturalist 56: 111.
SAMUEL, M. D., D. O. JOLY, M. A. WILD, S. D. WRIGHT, D. L. OTIS, R. W. WERGE, AND M. W. MILLER. 2003. Surveillance strategies for detecting chronic wasting disease in free-ranging deer and elk. Results of a CWD surveillance workshop. USGSNational Wildlife Health Center, Madison, Wisconsin, 41 pp.
SICURANZA, L. P. 1979. An ecological study of motor vehicle-deer accidents in southern Michigan. Masters Thesis, Michigan State University, Lansing, Michigan, 37 pp.
SIGURDSON, C. J., C. BARILLAS-MURY, M. W. MILLER, B. OESCH, L. J. M. VAN KEULEN, J. P. M. LANGEVELD, AND E. A. HOOVER. 2002. PrPCWD lymphoid cell targets in early and advanced chronic wasting disease of mule deer. Journal of General Virology 83: 26172628.
SPRAKER, T. R., R. R. ZINK, B. A. CUMMINGS, C. J. SIGURSDON, M. W. MILLER, AND K. I. OROURKE. 2002. Distribution of protease-resistant prion protein and spongiform encephalopathy in free-ranging mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) with chronic wasting disease. Veterinary Pathology 39: 546556.
UNSWORTH, J. W., D. F. PAC, G. C. WHITE, AND R. M. BARTMANN. 1999. Mule deer survival in Colorado, Idaho, and Montana. Journal of Wildlife Management 63: 315326.
WILD, M. A., T. R. SPRAKER, C. J. SIGURDSON, K. I. OROURKE, AND M. W. MILLER. 2002. Preclinical diagnosis of chronic wasting disease in captive mule deer and white-tailed deer using tonsillar biopsy. Journal of General Virology 83: 26292634.
WILLIAMS, E. S., AND M. W. MILLER. 2002. Chronic wasting disease in deer and elk in North America. In Infectious diseases of wildlife: Detection, diagnosis, and management, R. G. Bengis (ed.). Revue scientifique et technique Office international des Epizooties 21: 305316.
, , T. J. KREEGER, R. H. KAHN, AND E. T. THORNE. 2002. Chronic wasting disease of deer and elk: A review with recommendations for management. Journal of Wildlife Management 66: 551563.
, AND S. YOUNG. 1980. Chronic wasting disease of captive mule deer: A spongiform encephalopathy. Journal of Wildlife Diseases 16: 8998.[Abstract]
, AND . 1992. Spongiform encephalopathies of Cervidae. In Transmissible spongiform encephalopathies of animals, R. Bradley and D. Mathews (eds.). Revue scientifique et technique Office international des Epizooties 11: 551567.
, AND . 1993. Neuropathology of chronic wasting disease of mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) and elk (Cervus elaphus nelsoni). Veterinary Pathology 30: 3645.[Abstract]
WOLFE, L. L., M. M. CONNER, T. H. BAKER, V. J. DREITZ, K. P. BURNHAM, E. S. WILLIAMS, N. T. HOBBS, AND M. W. MILLER. 2002. Evaluation of antemortem sampling to estimate chronic wasting disease prevalence in free-ranging mule deer. Journal of Wildlife Management 66: 564573.
, M. W. MILLER, AND E. S. WILLIAMS. 2004. Feasibility of "test-and-cull" for managing chronic wasting disease in urban mule deer. Wildlife Society Bulletin 32: 500505.
Received for publication 3 May 2004.
This article has been cited by other articles:
![]() |
D. P. Walsh and M. W. Miller A Weighted Surveillance Approach for Detecting Chronic Wasting Disease Foci J. Wildl. Dis., January 1, 2010; 46(1): 118 - 135. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
![]() |
C. E. Krumm, M. M. Conner, N. T. Hobbs, D. O. Hunter, and M. W. Miller Mountain lions prey selectively on prion-infected mule deer Biol Lett, October 28, 2009; (2009) rsbl.2009.0742v1. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| HOME | HELP | FEEDBACK | SUBSCRIPTIONS | ARCHIVE | SEARCH | TABLE OF CONTENTS |