Public tolerance of lethal wildlife management in Japan: A best-worst scaling questionnaire analysis.

Human-wildlife conflict is a major problem for sustainable development worldwide. Lethal management options play an essential role in wildlife management. However, assessing public tolerance of lethal options is crucial. While this has been studied for specific targets, variations in public tolerance by wildlife characteristics such as biological class and nativeness remain unexplored. Accordingly, we administered a questionnaire survey (n = 1000) using best-worst scaling to reveal the comparative tolerance of lethal wildlife management for 10 wildlife species (including mammals, birds, fish, and plants) in Japan. We found that public tolerance of lethal wildlife management differed by species rather than biological class and nativeness. We then used cluster analysis to group respondents with similar lethal wildlife management tolerances and found commonalities based on age, sex, and beliefs. This study offers theoretical insights for understanding public tolerance of lethal wildlife management as well as practical recommendations for wildlife managers.

Reproducible induction of depressive-like behavior in C57BL/6J mice exposed to chronic social defeat stress with a modified sensory contact protocol.

AIMS: C57BL/6J mice are well-known to exhibit resilience to chronic social defeat stress (CSDS) for induction of depressive-like behavior. Establishment of protocols for reproducible induction of depressive-like behavior in C57BL/6J mice would be useful to elucidate the underlying molecular mechanisms using target gene-knock-in and -out mice whose background is generally C57BL/6J. Here, we developed a modified CSDS protocol for reproducible induction of depressive-like behavior in C57BL/6J mice, and compared the profile of their gut microbiota with that with the standard CSDS protocol. MAIN METHODS: To prevent acclimation of defeated C57BL/6J mice to aggressive ICR mice, the sensory contact following a daily 10 min-defeat episode was performed by housing an individual defeated mouse in a cage set next to a cage for the aggressor one. KEY FINDINGS: The number of attacks by ICR mice on C57BL/6J ones was significantly increased with the modified CSDS protocol, and the susceptible mice exhibited greater hippocampal inflammation and an increased immobility time in the forced swim test, compared in the case of the standard CSDS protocol, and the reproducibility was confirmed in another set of experiments. Both the standard and modified CSDS protocols changed the diversity and relative composition of gut microbiota in the susceptible mice, but there was no apparent difference in them between the standard and modified CSDS-susceptible mice. SIGNIFICANCE: We established a CSDS protocol for reproducible induction of depressive-like behavior in C57BL/6J mice, and the features of the gut microbiota were similar in the susceptible mice with and without the depressive-like behavior.