Field test of impacts of intraguild predation on a mammalian prey population : the badger Meles meles and hedgehog Erinaceus europaeus

Young, Richard (2005) Field test of impacts of intraguild predation on a mammalian prey population : the badger Meles meles and hedgehog Erinaceus europaeus. University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis.

Record type: Thesis (Doctoral)

Abstract

Previous work indicated that badger predation may regulate hedgehog populations and predicted that in areas where badgers are abundant, predation pressure would exclude hedgehogs from their preferred agricultural habitats. Surveys of hedgehogs in rural areas of England, carried out in the present study, confirmed this prediction and identified a negative spatial relationship between badger density and hedgehog occurrence and abundance in suburban micro-habitats, which are thought to provide hedgehogs with spatial refuges from predation. When badger abundance was reduced by culling, hedgehog population density in suburban micro-habitats doubled, while remaining unchanged in controls.

The growth rate of hedgehog populations appeared to be negatively related to indices of badger abundance, indicative of top-down control by predation. There was evidence that hedgehog population growth rates were density dependent, potentially leading to two stable states of abundance according to the magnitude of predation. In the control treatment, a lower equilibrium population size indicated regulation by predators, whereas in areas where badgers were culled, an equilibrium population size some three times the density was observed. Predation risk may have influenced habitat use by hedgehogs. After badger culling, pastoral habitats were used more and suburban habitat less, although the effect was marginal. In combination with previous results, this study has provided evidence that predation by badgers determines the distribution and abundance of hedgehog populations and that spatial refugia, in the form of suburban micro-habitats, allow predator and prey to co-exist at a landscape scale.

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