Temporal patterns of roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) traffic accidents in Lithuania: effects of daytime, season and lunar phase
Author:
GALINSKAITĖ Lina1, IGNATAVIČIUS Gytautas1
Affiliation:
1. Institute of Biosciences, Life Sciences Center, Vilnius University, 10257 Vilnius, Lithuania
Abstract
In many countries road safety and animal protection pose a serious problem due to wildlife-related accidents.
Profound information of temporal and spatial patterns of deer-vehicle accidents is necessary for safe mitigation
efforts and further accident analysis. We described the temporal patterns of roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) vehicle collisions
from 2014 till 2021 in Lithuania. Using a comprehensive dataset, consisting of 19.707 data points, we examined
the influence of different time units (i.e. day of year, day of week, month) and moon illumination percentage. Therefore,
we identified roe deer peak accident periods within the time units. Highest frequencies of collisions occurred in May,
November and December. Between days of the week collisions increased on Friday with a secondary peak on Saturday.
Relationships between roe deer vehicle collisions (RDVc) and lunar phases were analyzed, providing evidence for high
frequencies of RDVc during full moon illumination. We believe that RDVc are dependent both on human activity in
traffic and wildlife activity. Overall our results highlight, that RDVc disturbance among time is nonrandom. Methods
to effective reduce deer-vehicle accidents should be adapted to species-specific temporal periods or place and concentrated
to short-term mitigation measures (e.g. speed limits, wildlife warning signs, traffic controls).
Reference37 articles.
1. Alamgir, M., Campbell, M. J., Sloan, S., Goosem, M., Clements, G. R., Mahmoud, I. M., & Laurance, W. F. (2017). Economic, socio-political and environmental risks of road development in the tropics. Current Biology, 27(20), 1130-1140. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2017.08.067 2. Baek, S.-Y., & Lee, S.-M. (2021). Temporal patterns and hotspot identification of vehicle collisions with the roe deer (Capreolus pygargus) on Jeju Island, South Korea. Pakistan Journal of Zoology, 54(1), 347-352. https://doi.org/10.17582/journal.pjz/20201130031155 3. Bissonette, J. A., Kassar, C. A., & Cook, L. J. (2008). Assessment of costs associated with deer-vehicle collisions: human death and injury, vehicle damage, and deer loss. Human-Wildlife Interactions, 2(1) 17-27. https://doi.org/10.26077/ns32-mk60 4. Canal, D., Martın, B., de Lucas, M., & Ferrer, M. (2018). Dogs are the main species involved in animal-vehicle collisions in southern Spain: Daily, seasonal and spatial analyses of collisions. PLoS ONE, 13(9), e0203693. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0203693 5. Colino-Rabanal, V. J., Langen, T. A., Peris, S. J., & Lizana, M. (2018). Ungulate: Vehicle collision rates are associated with the phase of the moon. Biodiversity and Conservation, 27, 681-694. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-017-1458-x
|
|