Evaluation of oral baits and distribution methods for Tasmanian devils (Sarcophilus harrisii)†
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Context Diseases are increasingly contributing to wildlife population declines. Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus harrisii) populations have locally declined by 82%, largely owing to the morbidity and mortality associated with two independent transmissible devil facial tumours (DFT1 and DFT2). Toxic baits are often used as a management tool for controlling vertebrate pest populations in Australia, but in other areas of the world, oral baits are also used to deliver vaccines or pharmaceuticals to wildlife. Aim Our goal was to evaluate the potential use of edible baits as vehicles for vaccine delivery to Tasmanian devils. Method We first tested bait palatability with captive devils. Bait interactions were recorded, and consumption and bait interaction behaviours were quantified. We next trialled baits containing inert capsules as potential vaccine containers in captivity. After confirming bait palatability in captivity, ground baiting was trialled at six field sites and monitored using camera traps. Finally, an automated bait dispenser was trialled at field sites to attempt to limit bait consumption by non-target species. Key results Captive devils consumed all types of placebo baits, but consumed a higher percentage of ruminant- and fish-based baits than cereal-based baits. Captive devils also consumed inert capsules inserted into placebo baits. Ground-baiting trials in the field showed that 53% of baits were removed from bait stations, with 76% of the removals occurring on the first night. Devils were suspected or confirmed to remove about 7% of baits compared with 93% by non-target species. We also evaluated an automated bait dispenser, which reduced bait removal by non-target species and resulted in over 50% of the baits being removed by devils. Conclusions This study demonstrated that captive and wild devils will accept and consume placebo versions of commercial baits. Bait dispensers or modified baits or baiting strategies are needed to increase bait uptake by devils. Implications Bait dispensers can be used at a regional scale to deliver baits to devils. These could potentially be used as vaccine-delivery vehicles to mitigate the impacts of disease on devil populations.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.037 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".