Abstract
The presence of roe deer can be an important component within ecological and epidemiological systems contributing to the risk and spread of a range of vector-borne diseases. Deer are important hosts for many vectors, and may therefore serve as a focal point or attractant for vectors or may themselves act as a reservoir for vector-borne disease. Three spatial modelling techniques were used to generate an ensemble model describing the proportion of suitable roe deer habitat within recorded distributions for Europe as identified from diverse sources. The resulting model is therefore an index of presence, which may be useful in supporting the modelling of vector-borne disease across Europe.
Highlights
The habitats were defined as more than 10% Woodland, and neither urban nor peri-urban, according to Tapper(1999) [8], and is somewhat UK centric To allow for behaviours where deer utilise pasture/heathland/grassland close to woodland shelter we defined as suitable habitat areas where grassland/heathland occurred within 1km of a cell with sufficient woodland (Searle, personal communication)
The three layers were each aggregated to 1km, and Suitable habitat was defined as a) those cells containing more than 10% woodland but no urban area; or b) grassland cells next to otherwise suitable habitat
Depending on the model 1000-3000 sample points were used in each of 25 bootstraps. Quality control These models are a first attempt at quantifying the roe deer distribution at this scale and there has been no ground truth validation of these maps so far
Summary
A First Attempt at Modelling Roe Deer (Capreolus capreolus) Distributions Over Europe. The presence of roe deer can be an important component within ecological and epidemiological systems contributing to the risk and spread of a range of vector-borne diseases. Three spatial modelling techniques were used to generate an ensemble model describing the proportion of suitable roe deer habitat within recorded distributions for Europe as identified from diverse sources. The data sets used were as follows: Habitat definition For much of the indicated range the distributions detailed above were, by their nature, simple presence limits. Within these designated boundaries there was no indication of absence.
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