Biodiversity in urban gardens: assessing the accuracy of citizen science data on garden hedgehogs

Urban gardens provide a rich habitat for species that are declining in rural areas. However, collecting data in gardens can be logistically-challenging, time-consuming and intrusive to residents. This study examines the potential of citizen scientists to record hedgehog sightings and collect habitat data within their own gardens using an online questionnaire. Focussing on a charismatic species meant that the number of responses was high (516 responses were obtained in 6 weeks, with a ~ 50:50% split between gardens with and without hedgehog sightings). While many factors commonly thought to influence hedgehog presence (e.g. compost heaps) were present in many hedgehog-frequented gardens, they were not discriminatory as they were also found in gardens where hedgehogs were not seen. Respondents were most likely to have seen hedgehogs in their garden if they had also seen hedgehogs elsewhere in their neighbourhood. However, primary fieldwork using hedgehog ‘footprint tunnels’ showed that hedgehogs were found to be just as prevalent in gardens in which hedgehogs had previously been reported as gardens where they had not been reported. Combining these results indicates that hedgehogs may be more common in urban and semi-urban gardens than previously believed, and that casual volunteer records of hedgehogs may be influenced more by the observer than by habitat preferences of the animal. When verified, volunteer records can provide useful information, but care is needed in interpreting these data

Helminth fauna of the northern white-breasted hedgehog (Erinaceus roumanicus) in Serbia

The result of helminthological examination of 28 hedgehogs died at traffic accident and 12 samples of feces collected from pets hedgehogs during 2013–2015 were presented. Three species of helminths were found: Crenosoma striatum, Hymenolepis erinacei and Aonchotheca erinacei. This is the first research of parasitic fauna of hedgehogs in Serbia

Impacts of Removing Badgers on Localised Counts of Hedgehogs

Experimental evidence of the interactions among mammalian predators that eat or compete with one another is rare, due to the ethical and logistical challenges of managing wild populations in a controlled and replicated way. Here, we report on the opportunistic use of a replicated and controlled culling experiment (the Randomised Badger Culling Trial) to investigate the relationship between two sympatric predators: European badgers Meles meles and western European hedgehogs Erinaceus europaeus. In areas of preferred habitat (amenity grassland), counts of hedgehogs more than doubled over a 5-year period from the start of badger culling (from 0.9 ha(−1) pre-cull to 2.4 ha(−1) post-cull), whereas hedgehog counts did not change where there was no badger culling (0.3–0.3 hedgehogs ha(−1)). This trial provides experimental evidence for mesopredator release as an outcome of management of a top predator