Domestic dog roaming patterns in remote northern Australian indigenous communities and implications for disease modelling

Publication date: Available online 20 July 2017 Source:Preventive Veterinary Medicine Author(s): Emily G. Hudson, Victoria J. Brookes, Salome Dürr, Michael P. Ward Although Australia is canine rabies free, the Northern Peninsula Area (NPA), Queensland and other northern Australian communities are at risk of an incursion due to proximity to rabies infected islands of Indonesia and existing disease spread pathways. Northern Australia also has large populations of free-roaming domestic dogs, presenting a risk of rabies establishment and maintenance should an incursion occur. Agent-based rabies spread models are being used to predict potential outbreak size and identify effective control strategies to aid incursion preparedness. A key component of these models is knowledge of dog roaming patterns to inform contact rates. However, a comprehensive understanding of how dogs utilise their environment and the heterogeneity of their movements to estimate contact rates is lacking. Using a novel simulation approach – and GPS data collected from 21 free-roaming domestic dogs in the NPA in 2014 and 2016 – we characterised the roaming patterns within this dog population. Multiple subsets from each individual dog’s GPS dataset were selected representing different monitoring durations and a utilisation distribution (UD) and derived core (50%) and extended (95%) home ranges (HR) were estimated for each duration. Three roaming patterns were identified, based on changes in mean HR o...
Source: Preventive Veterinary Medicine - Category: Veterinary Research Source Type: research