Biology 3446B Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Ungulate, Clostridium, Botulism
22 Feb 2014
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Document Summary
Starvation death or debilitation due to lack of food quantity. Malnutrition death or debilitation due to lack of food quality. Starvation and malnutrition usually affect some sex-age classes more than others usually very young and very old. Major forms of mortality in ungulate populations, especially deer. In some species, prime age males are very susceptible i. e. elk mortality: spends most of fall guarding harem/mating stores little fat = increase winter. In natural environments, mortality due to accidents is infrequent. Abnormal accidental mortality particularly due to humans: moose/train collisions during winter, ~95,000 white-tailed deer killed by cars, 1,000,000 vertebrates/day killed in na. Wildlife may be killed directly by severe weather. Wildlife losses are often due to a combination of exposure and malnutrition snow makes food unavailable. Exposure is usually a density independent mortality source. Most wildlife disease can be classified as toxic or infectious. Toxic diseases rarely occurs naturally in wildlife.
