Deerly departed: Movement ecology and chronic wasting disease transmission among Wisconsin's white-tailed deer"

From 2017 to 2020, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources undertook a massive study of white-tailed deer and chronic wasting disease (CWD) in southwest Wisconsin. As part of that effort, over 800 deer were captured and given GPS collars to track their movements. Through a collaboration between the DNR and UW-Madison, I have spent over four years analysing this data.

In this talk, I will discuss some of the findings from this work, including how deer movement shapes the risk of CWD transmission in space and time - and how CWD, in turn, alters deer movement.

Dr. Marie Gilbertson is a staff scientist in the Wisconsin Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit at UW-Madison. She earned a B.S. in zoology from Colorado State University, and a D.V.M. and Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. Marie's research focuses on how wildlife movement and behavior interact with changing environments to shape disease transmission. Since 2021, she's closely collaborated with the Wisconsin DNR to investigate the dynamics between deer movement ecology and chronic wasting disease (CWD) transmission.