Major update

[spacelem]

likeneontubing thinks I don't post often enough. Hey, I do 3-4 posts a month, what do you people want from me

Comments

[missedephemera]

Congratulations! Well done you :-)

[spacelem]

Thanks, I'll try and do something productive for society from now on (dissertations notwithstanding).

[spacelem]

Well, it took me long enough - I've screwed up enough times in the past.

[spudtater]

Hurrah for dissertation done-ness!

[spacelem]

The migration and contact rates have to adjust during culling. Badgers have a pretty complex social hierarchy, and it tends to remain stable. They also have a very low migration rate. When culling starts, this gets disturbed, and they start flying round like ping pong balls. Or something like that anyway.

Previous models (and mine) predict that culling reduces population numbers, and the infection rates which depend on population numbers should decrease too. That's not what happened, so the the models are wrong. The only thing that worried me was how close the badgers could be to an optimum infection rate, and how an increased contact rate would actually lower the infection rate, since it was no longer at optimum.

Whatever happens, the model was wrong, or it would have agreed with the data seen in the field.

[spacelem]

I read a paper from 1995 that tried to model badger populations, and they reviewed all the known population dynamics at the time. Apparently it normally takes 8-10 years for a colonisation of an empty sett.

[luckylove]

Congrats!