Wildlife Disease News Digest

Muscovy duck deaths: plague or poison?
St Petersburg Times – www.tampabay.com
01 Apr 2008
A Lindberg
Location: Kenneth City, Pinellas, Florida, USA

. . . By late last week, an estimated 28 ducks had been found dead or dying. Town and wildlife officials think the birds are suffering from an incurable disease called duck viral enteritis, also known as duck plague or DVE.

But some duck lovers aren't so sure that the birds are succumbing to the plague.
"I'm skeptical," said Maureen Lyons, who helped spearhead a successful campaign last year against a proposed ordinance banning the feeding of ducks on private property. She worries that someone is poisoning the fowl and she's not completely sold on the DVE theory.

. . . But other symptoms, including bloody feces, would indicate DVE, said Meredith Grinnell, a biological scientist with the Fish and Wildlife Research Institute, a division of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Grinnell said the wildlife commission sent samples from two ducks to its lab in Gainesville and preliminary results indicate the culprit is DVE. Other samples have been sent to Atlanta and Grinnell said she expects the results to confirm those from Gainesville.

>>> FULL ARTICLE

Global Warming Holds New Threats For Australian Wildlife
Science Daily – www.sciencedaily.com
01 Apr 2008
Location: Australia

Climate change is likely to transform many of Australia's natural landscapes. A new report, Implications of Climate Change for the National Reserve System, was prepared for the Federal Government in Australia, and released April 1 by the Environment Minister Peter Garrett. Report author Dr Michael Dunlop says climate change is forcing environmental scientists to rethink their approach.

Temperatures over Australia are projected to rise by about 1 ºC by 2030, and 1.8 ºC by 2070, relative to 1990 levels.

“Traditionally, conservation has focused on preventing change or restoring landscapes toward a pre-European state, but we now have to accept that change is inevitable, and it’s happening quite fast,” he says.

“Some animals and plants will be found in places where they’ve never been seen before, and others will disappear from areas where they were once common, and for many regions the look, sound, and smell of the landscapes we are familiar with will gradually change.”

The report confirms that Australia’s 9,000 protected areas are critical for nature conservation in a warming world, but Dr Dunlop says new protected areas will also be needed.

>>> FULL ARTICLE

Tripura birds fall to mystery disease
The Times of India – timesofindia.indiatimes.com
02 Apr 2008
Location: Tripura, India

About 3,000 birds, including poultry fowl, have died due to some mysterious disease during the past one week in Tripura, officials said on Wednesday.

Villagers said more than 3,000 chickens, ducks, crows and other birds have first fallen sick and then died at bordering Kamalpur, 160 km north of here.

A team of doctors of animal resource development department (ARDD), led by its deputy director Chandan Kumar Roy, has rushed to the area and started collecting blood samples of the birds.

"Several dogs and five jackals, which had consumed the affected birds, were also found dead," the villagers said.

"We don't think the birds have died of bird flu. We suspect it to be Ranikhet disease. However, we would send the blood sample to national laboratories for confirmation," said Ashim Burman, director ARDD.

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Deadly Frog Fungus Spreads in Virus-Like Waves
National Geographic News – news.nationalgeographic.com
01 Apr 2008
K Than

A frog-killing fungus in Central and South America spreads in waves like other infectious diseases, challenging a theory that climate change is to blame, a new study says.

The study runs counter to the results of a 2006 study published in the journal Nature, which found that global warming promoted the spread of the chytrid fungus. . . .
If global warming was triggering chytrid outbreaks, amphibian declines would occur in multiple spots simultaneously, according to lead author Karen Lips, a zoologist at Southern Illinois University.

"The idea is that the fungus is a native thing that naturally occurs in these areas, and that some environmental trigger causes it to break out, going from some form that doesn't infect or kill frogs to something that does," said Lips, who has received funding from the National Geographic Society. (The National Geographic Society owns National Geographic News.) But the team found no evidence of concurrent declines.

>>> FULL ARTICLE

Cited Journal Article

>>>Riding the Wave: Reconciling the Roles of Disease and Climate Change in Amphibian Declines - KR Lips et al.

Coral Reefs And Climate Change: Microbes Could Be The Key To Coral Death
Science Daily – www.sciencedaily.com
01 Apr 2008

Coral reefs could be dying out because of changes to the microbes that live in them just as much as from the direct rise in temperature caused by global warming, according to scientists speaking April 2, 2008 at the Society for General Microbiology's 162nd meeting.

. . . "Many of the deaths we see in the coral reefs, which occur following coral bleaching events, when huge areas of reef die off like in 1998 when 17% of the world's reefs were killed, can be put down to changes in the microbes which live in and around the reefs," says Dr John Bythell, a biologist from Newcastle University. "These microbes can be thought of as being similar to the bacteria that normally live in our guts and help us digest our food."

. . . A key factor newly identified by the Newcastle team is the role of surface mucus secreted by corals. This seems to act as a shield, preventing disease-causing pathogens such as bacteria and some viruses from penetrating their tissues.

"The reefs' defensive mucus or slime is also at risk from stresses brought on by climate change. This seems to happen just at a time when some of the key functional microbe groups are changing, reducing the corals' other defences and boosting some disease-causing bacteria, making them more virulent," says Dr Bythell.

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Missouri Amphibians Are Part of Worldwide Decline
Kansas City Info Zine – www.infozine.com
31 Mar 2008
J Low
Location: Missouri, USA

With spring peepers chirping like crazy and leopard frogs chortling up a storm, it may seem hard to believe that toad, frog and salamander populations are in decline worldwide. Missouri is no exception, however, and conservation agencies and private conservation organizations are working to find the causes of the decline and ways to stop it. They say citizens have a role to play in the effort.

. . . Twenty-three percent of the United States' 250 amphibian species are in decline. Approximately 16 percent of Missouri's amphibian species show declining population trends. One-third (14 of 43) of Show-Me State amphibian species are "species of conservation concern."

"Species of conservation concern are species showing declining trends, with limited occurrence in Missouri and/or are restricted to limited habitat," said Missouri State Herpetologist Jeff Briggler. "We try to monitor these species to detect declines early. We need to track them to make sure they remain part of Missouri's biological diversity."

>>> FULL ARTICLE

>>> Professor speaks about effects of pesticides on amphibians, mammals

OTHER WILDLIFE HEALTH RELATED NEWS
Photo courtesy of National Public Radio