The Badgers of Wytham Woods by Macdonald, David; Newman, Chris;

A Model for Behaviour, Ecology, and Evolution

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Product details:

Publisher OUP Oxford
Date of Publication 5 September 2025

ISBN 9780198893592
Binding Paperback
No. of pages592 pages
Size 245x190x30 mm
Weight 1259 g
Language English
Illustrations 272 line figures and colour photographs

Short description:

Through a mix of accessible, highly readable prose and cutting-edge science, the authors weave a riveting scientific story of the lives of these intriguing creatures, highlighting the broader insights into mammalian behaviour, ecology, epidemiology, evolutionary biology, and conservation by using badgers as a model system.

Long description:

The badgers of Wytham Woods (Oxford, UK) have been studied continuously and intensively by David Macdonald for almost 50 years (25 of them with his former student and co-author Chris Newman), generating a wealth of data pertaining to every facet of their ecology and evolution. Through a mix of accessible, highly readable prose and cutting-edge science, the authors weave a riveting scientific story of the lives of these intriguing creatures, highlighting the insights offered to science more broadly through badgers as a model system. They provide a paradigm - from population down to molecule - for a deeper understanding of mammalian behaviour, ecology, epidemiology, evolutionary biology, and conservation. The real value of this long-term study is particularly apparent with current and globally relevant challenges such as climate change, disease epidemics, and senescence. This unique dataset enables us to examine these issues in a context that only a half-century experiment can reveal.

The Badgers of Wytham Woods will appeal to a broad audience of professional academics (especially carnivore and mammalian biologists), researchers and students at all levels, governmental and non-governmental wildlife bodies, and to the natural historian fascinated by wild animals and the remarkable processes of nature they exemplify.

The 19 chapters comprehensively address behavior, population ecology, and the effects of disease and weather on the European badger, and make appropriate comparisons with the other five genera of the world's badger species. During the study, life history data was recorded on over 1,800 individuals. Given the size of the study population and time depth of the study itself, there should be no surprise that such an enormous amount of information is presented in one volume.

Foreword
Preface
Setting the Scene: Births and Beginnings
It's Tough at the Bottom
Apprenticeships for Badger Society
Setts, Society and Super-groups: The Geology of Social Behaviour
The Sum of the Parts: Knowing One's Place in Badger Society
Social Odours: The Perfume of Society
Sex: How and Why, and with Whom?
Social Behaviour in an Uncooperative Society
Who Goes There: Friend or Foe?
The Ecological Foundations to Badger Group-Living
The Economics of Survival: Population Size, and Crashing through the Ceiling
Weather: Actuarial Insights
Weather: Badgers Adapt or Die
The Game of Life
In Sickness and in Health
The Story of Badgers and TB: Perturbation and Beyond
Genetic Mate Choice: Quality Matters
Senescence, Telomeres, and Life-History Trade-Offs
Of the Same Stripe, or Not: Exceptions that Prove Rules