Effects of vasectomy on breeding-related movement and activity in free-ranging white-tailed deer
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Background An abundance of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) in suburban communities can lead to problems such as increased deer-vehicle collisions (DVCs), tick-borne illnesses, and forest degradation. Deer populations can be managed using traditional lethal methods; however, these methods are often impractical, ineffective, or socially unacceptable, prompting interest in management alternatives, including fertility control. Some fertility control methods (such as vasectomy, tubal ligation, and porcine zona pellucida-based vaccines) cause unsuccessfully bred females to experience multiple estrous cycles, potentially altering their movement behavior and fine-scale activity. Such changes could increase the risk of DVCs and negatively affect the physical condition of the animals. However, the effects of such treatments on animal behavior remain poorly understood, specifically in terms of breeding-related movements and energetics. This study aimed to evaluate the behavioral impacts of a large-scale vasectomy program on white-tailed deer. Methods We conducted a 2-year study using a treatment/control design and analyzed biologging data of white-tailed deer at two sites near New York City, USA. We used a moving-window approach to assess the effects of a large-scale vasectomy program on the seasonal changes in movement behavior (home-range size, distance traveled, diffusion, and excursivity) and fine-scale activity (time spent in low-activity states and the daily number of state transitions). Results There were no biologically significant differences in movement behavior or activity trends in either sex between the treatment and control groups. Females in both groups exhibited similar trends in all movement metrics, but females at the treatment site tended to switch between activity states more often in winter. Males at the treatment site expanded their space use less than control males during peak breeding season but otherwise exhibited similar movement behavior trends. Mortality rates and causes were similar at both sites. Conclusions The vasectomy program, despite causing extra estrus periods in unsuccessfully bred females, is unlikely to cause appreciable behavioral changes that could exacerbate management-related issues at the time scales investigated. Fertility control methods inducing extra estrus periods could be implemented alone or alongside other strategies to reduce abundant deer populations with minimal impact on behavior.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
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 | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.015 | 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".