October 23, 2008

TOP STORIES

Experts claim forest destruction may lead to rise in viral disease infections
Africa Science News Service - africansciencenews.org
22 Oct 2008

“Changes to the environment create conditions that favour the emergence of arboviruses in human communities,” a report by two leading virologist at the Kenya Medical Research Institute says. They say increased contact with previously untouched nature is bringing arboviruses, a class of viruses carried from animals to humans by insects, spiders and other bugs. The viruses cause many diseases in humans, ranging from self-limiting fevers to deadly haemorrhagic ones that cause bleeding like ebola, as well as infections of the brain almost as lethal as meningitis. Top among the arboviruses are Ebola, Marburg, yellow fever, the Rift Valley Fever, dengue fever and the West Nile Fever. Others are the so-called Chikungunya, O’nyong-nyong, Crimean-Congo haemorrhage fever and bird flu.





Amphibian Diversity Decreases Chances Of Parasitic Disease, Study Shows
ScienceDaily - www.sciencedaily.com
22 Oct 2008
Photo courtesy of Pieter Johnson, University of Colorado

American toads who hang out with gray tree frogs reduce their chances of parasitic infection, limb deformation. A new University of Colorado at Boulder study showing that American toads who pal around with gray tree frogs reduce their chances of parasitic infections known to cause limb malformations has strong implications for the benefits of biodiversity on emerging wildlife diseases. The experiments showed that when the toad tadpoles were raised in tanks with the parasitic trematodes -- tiny worms whose larvae burrow into tadpole limb regions and disrupt normal leg development -- 40 percent of the emerging frogs became deformed, said CU-Boulder Assistant Professor Pieter Johnson. But when the toad tadpoles were joined in the tanks with gray tree frog tadpoles, parasitic infections in the toads dropped by almost half, said Johnson, lead author of the study.




Video: Tracking Internet wildlife trade
cnet news - www.cnetnews.com
21 Oct 2008
Image courtesy of IFAW

At a press conference in San Francisco, Jeffrey Flocken and Barbara Cartwright of the International Fund for Animal Welfare talk about their organization's report, "Killing with Keystrokes." The 38-page document details the illegal trade in endangered species over the Internet. It's the result of a six-week investigation that tracked more than 7,000 wildlife product listings on 185 Web sites.




OTHER WILDLIFE HEALTH RELATED NEWS


Species Decline & Extinction Threats News


Not so common: scientists raise alarm as Britain's seals disappear
The Guardian - www.guardian.co.uk
20 Oct 2008
Photo courtesy of Rex Features

The cause was baffling scientists. "We just don't know," he said. "Our collective view is that there's some large-scale process going on in the northern North Sea which is driving down seal numbers. We're seeing a massive decline. It's quite a frightening decline because these populations don't change as quickly as that under normal circumstances. "This is very abnormal. To give you an idea of the level of abnormality, the rates of decline are equivalent to these populations producing no offspring for five or six years." The steep declines mirror other crises in the marine environment.

Scientists Determine Which Species to Save
Live Science - www.livescience.com
20 Oct 2008

Earth may be in the midst of a sixth mass extinction event due to our impact on the planet, scientists have said, and the upshot could mean nearly 50 percent of all plant and animal species will disappear in the coming decades. Rather than try to save them all, biologists are now trying to figure out which species are most crucial. The answer is to conserve those with the greatest genetic diversity, researchers report this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "Given that we are losing species from ecosystems around the world, we need to know which species matter the most — and which we should pour our resources into protecting," said researcher Marc W. Cadotte of UC Santa Barbara.



WILDLIFE HEALTH RELATED PUBLICATIONS

Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology - Ahead of Print

Articles of note:
  • Organochlorine Pesticides, PCBs, Dioxins, and Metals in Postterm Peregrine Falcon (Falco peregrinus) Eggs from the Mid-Atlantic States, 1993–1999
  • The Effects of Heavy Metal Mine Drainage on Population Size Structure, Reproduction, and Condition of Western Mosquitofish, Gambusia affinis
  • Temporal Trends (1992–2007) of Perfluorinated Chemicals in Northern Sea Otters (Enhydra lutris kenyoni) from South-Central Alaska

Influenza Virus (H5N1) in Live Bird Markets and Food Markets, Thailand
Emerging Infectious Diseases.
2008: ePub ahead of print
A Amonsin et al.

Veterinary Parasitology - November 25, 2008
Volume 158, Issue (1-2)
Table of Contents of Issue

at Thursday, October 23, 2008

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