Favourability for the presence of wild rabbit warrens in motorway verges: implications for the spread of a native agricultural pest species.

Pest species cause significant ecological, social and economic impacts, and programs to control them usually target specific landscape features when pests use these to disperse. Roads or railways are often used by pest species as dispersal corridors, but little is known about the specific characteristics of these human infrastructures that facilitate pest species dispersal. This is particularly evident in the case of native agricultural vertebrate pests like the European wild rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) in the Iberian Peninsula (IP). Rabbit damage to agricultural production in IP has increased notably in recent years. This study uses a ‘favourability function’ to model the extent to which macroecological favourable conditions for rabbits and different fine-scale variables, including environmental, anthropogenic and agricultural factors, favour the presence of rabbit warrens on the verges of a motorway network in southern IP. For this purpose, we collected rabbit warren locations during car transects using CyberTraker 3.0 installed in a pad along 787 km of motorways. Our results revealed that rabbit warren distribution was widespread along the verges. Rabbit warren presence correlated positively with the presence of olive groves and with macroecological favourable conditions for rabbits. Our results provide strong evidence that rabbits use motorway verges, which are likely to act as dispersal corridors across landscapes. Additionally, our innovative approach, based on a rabbit warren index, the favourability function and a combination of local and macroecological predictors, could be used in many other areas where rabbits cause crop damage to make fine-scale predictions of high risk stretches and, therefore, where to apply mitigation measures.

Data and Resources

Metadata
Download
DCAT-AP/NTI-RISP

Basic information
Resource type Text
Date of creation 2024-09-17
Date of last revision 2024-09-17
Show changelog
Metadata identifier 04211151-895c-5ece-97f3-a53a3f7c6314
Metadata language Spanish
Themes (NTI-RISP)
High-value dataset category
ISO 19115 topic category biota
Other identifier
Keyword URIs
Character encoding UTF-8
Spatial information
INSPIRE identifier ESPMITECOIEPNBFRAGM670
INSPIRE Themes
Geographic identifier Spain
Coordinate Reference System
Spatial representation Type
Bounding Box
"{\"type\": \"Polygon\", \"coordinates\": [[[-18.16, 27.64], [4.32, 27.64], [4.32, 43.79], [-18.16, 43.79], [-18.16, 27.64]]]}"
Spatial resolution of the dataset (m)
Provenance
Lineage statement
Metadata Standard
Conformity
Source dataset
Update frequency
Sources
  1. Ecological Indicators. Vol. 104
  2. pags. 398-404
Purpose
Process steps
Temporal extent (Start)
Temporal extent (End)
Version notes
Version
Dataset validity
Responsible Party
Name of the dataset creator Rouco, C., Farfán, M. Á., Olivero, J., Arias de Reyna, L., Villafuerte, R. y Delibes-Mateos, M.
Name of the dataset maintainer
Identifier of the dataset creator
Email of the dataset creator
Website of the dataset creator
Identifier of the dataset maintainer
Email of the dataset maintainer
Website of the dataset maintainer