ArticleJournal of the Royal Society, Interface2019
When to kill a cull: factors affecting the success of culling wildlife for disease control.
Article in Journal of the Royal Society, Interface, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 39 citations in OpenAlex.
- Host-pathogen interactions under pressure: A review and meta-analysis of stress-mediated effects on disease dynamics.Ecology letters · 2023Pooled it
- The effects of population management on wild ungulates: A systematic map of evidence for UK species.PloS one · 2022Pooled it
- Shedding-weighted network approaches for understanding tuberculosis maintenance in multihost systems using camera traps.Ecological applications : a publication of the Ecological Society of America · 2026Article
- Assessing kinship detection: single nucleotide polymorphism array density and estimator comparison in white-tailed deer.G3 (Bethesda, Md.) · 2026Article
- Domestic cat management in the UK: learnings from a global perspective.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2025Review
- The effectiveness of harvest for limiting wildlife disease: Insights from 20 years of chronic wasting disease in Wyoming.Ecological applications : a publication of the Ecological Society of America · 2025Article
- Rodent control strategies and Lassa virus: some unexpected effects in Guinea, West Africa.Emerging microbes & infections · 2024Article
- Effects of culling vampire bats on the spatial spread and spillover of rabies virus.Science advances · 2023Article
- Mathematical modeling at the livestock-wildlife interface: scoping review of drivers of disease transmission between species.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2023Article
- Disturbance Ecology Meets Bovine Tuberculosis (bTB) Epidemiology: A Before-and-After Study on the Association between Forest Clearfelling and bTB Herd Risk in Cattle Herds.Pathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- A systemic approach to assess the potential and risks of wildlife culling for infectious disease control.Communications biology · 2020Review
- Behavioural ecology and infectious disease: implications for conservation of biodiversity.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2019Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Culling wildlife to control disease can lead to both decreases and increases in disease levels, with apparently conflicting responses observed, even for the same wildlife-disease system. There is therefore a pressing need to understand how culling design and implementation influence culling's potential to achieve disease control. We address this gap in understanding using a spatial metapopulation model representing wildlife living in distinct groups with density-dependent dispersal and framed on the badger-bovine tuberculosis (bTB) system. We show that if population reduction is too low, or too few groups are targeted, a 'perturbation effect' is observed, whereby culling leads to increased movement and disease spread. We also demonstrate the importance of culling across appropriate time scales, with otherwise successful control strategies leading to increased disease if they are not implemented for long enough. These results potentially explain a number of observations of the dynamics of both successful and unsuccessful attempts to control TB in badgers including the Randomized Badger Culling Trial in the UK, and we highlight their policy implications. Additionally, for parametrizations reflecting a broad range of wildlife-disease systems, we characterize 'Goldilocks zones', where, for a restricted combination of culling intensity, coverage and duration, the disease can be reduced without driving hosts to extinction.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.