Diseases like chronic wasting disease (CWD) and avian influenza (HPAI) can influence whether a hunter should eat the animal they harvest. However, knowing if a certain disease exists in a population is difficult to assess in many free-ranging species. A foundational question spanning all disease/host systems is, 'How many negative tests do we need before we can know the population is free from disease?'
The WHP partnered with Cornell's Department of Statistics and Data Science to develop interactive apps that assist wildlife managers in planning their disease surveillance. Complete with over 30 real-world examples, the apps leverage wild animals' natural clustering behavior to estimate the number of tests necessary to rule out disease in the greater, free-ranging population.
App tutorials include common wildlife species in New York state, including CWD in deer, reovirus in birds, distemper in skunks, tularemia in beavers, adenovirus hemorrhagic disease in deer, avian influenza in geese, mange in foxes, and more. The apps are valid for any disease host system of wild animals and are openly available to health researchers across the globe.
- The Simple Sample Size App compares sample sizes with and without clustering behavior.
- The Efficient Sample Size App compares sample sizes with various sampling schemes.
Publications supporting the apps are found in the Journal of Agricultural, Environmental, and Biological Statistics and the Journal of Wildlife Diseases.
James G. Booth, Brenda J. Hanley, Noelle E. Thompson, Carlos Gonzalez Crespo, Sonja A. Christensen, Chris S. Jennelle, Joe N. Caudell, Zackary J. Delisle, Joseph Guinness, Nicholas A. Hollingshead, Cara E. Them, and Krysten L. Schuler "Management Agencies can Leverage Animal Social Structure for Wildlife Disease Surveillance," Journal of Wildlife Diseases 61(2), 472-476, (16 May 2025). https://doi.org/10.7589/JWD-D-24-00079
Darish JR, Kaganer AW, Hanley BJ, Schuler KL, Schwabenlander MD, Wolf TM, Ahmed MS, Rowden GR, Larsen PA, Kobashigawa E, Tewari D, Lichtenberg S, Pedersen JA, Zhang S, Sreevatsan S. Inter-laboratory comparison of real-time quaking-induced conversion (RT-QuIC) for the detection of chronic wasting disease prions in white-tailed deer retropharyngeal lymph nodes. J Vet Diagn Invest. 2025 Jan;37(1):86-93. doi: 10.1177/10406387241285165. Epub 2024 Oct 14. PMID: 39397658; PMCID: PMC11559902.
The software driving both apps is openly available through the Cornell eCommons Library.
- Sample size calculator for declaring a population free of infectious disease (Version 1)
- Efficient Sample Size Calculator
Making quite the splash in the wildlife world, the apps have already gone on to help reframe population-scale investigations in wildlife health across the nation and world. The group was invited by unanimous vote to present the apps to The Wildlife Society.
Access the recording here:
Thank you for clustering: Reducing the cost of wildlife disease science