Wildlife Disease News Digest

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Newly Identified Fungus Implicated In White-Nose Syndrome in Bats: Mysterious Bat Disease Decimates Colonies in the Northeast
USGS Newsroom - www.usgs.gov/newsroom
30 Oct 2008
Image courtesy of Al Hicks, NY DEC
Area: United States

. . . USGS microbiologist and lead author David Blehert isolated the fungus in April 2008, and identified it as a member of the group Geomyces. The research was conducted by U.S. Geological Survey scientists in collaboration with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, the New York State Department of Health, and others. Geomyces are a group of fungi that live in soil, water and air and are capable of growing and reproducing at refrigerator-level temperatures. Although the new fungus is a close genetic relative of known Geomyces, it does not look like a typical member of this group under the microscope. "We found that this fungus had colonized the skin of 90 percent of the bats we analyzed from all the states affected by white-nose syndrome," Blehert said.

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Researchers to study malaria, emergent disease
Arizona State University - asunews.asu.edu
28 Oct 2008
Area: United States

An Arizona State University research team headed by School of Life Sciences associate professor Ananias Escalante will share in more than $6.3 million in awards from the National Institutes of Health for three related studies. Two of the studies will examine the ecology and evolution of malaria and a third will delve into the genetic mysteries behind the host shift of retroviral disease from primates to humans. Escalante, lead investigator of the malarial studies, will undertake a global comparative study of the evolution of malarial drug resistance, with support from Yuseob Kim, assistant professor, and Maria Pacheco-Delgado, faculty research associate, in ASU’s School of Life Sciences. The researchers focus will be on the malarial parasite Plasmodium falciparum.

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Study Traces Frog Population Decline To Weed Killer
NPR - www.npr.org
29 Oct 2008
D Charles
Area: United States

All over the world, frog populations are declining because of diseases and the destruction of wetlands. A new study suggests another reason for the drop: a cascade of environmental changes set off by farmers who spray crops with the weed killer atrazine. Farmers have been using atrazine for 50 years; it's cheap and not very toxic to humans. But it's controversial because it stays in the environment for years. Several years ago, scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, reported that incredibly small amounts of atrazine kept frogs from reproducing. The Environmental Protection Agency commissioned one of the biggest studies in its history, but David Skelly, an ecologist at Yale University, says it didn't show the same damage to frogs.

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Dead dugong found in Jebel Dhanna
Gulf News - www.gulfnews.com
29 Oct 2008
R Absal
Area: Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates - Map It

Yet another dugong, an endangered marine mammal, has been found dead by the Marine environment experts from the Environment Agency - Abu Dhabi (EAD) at the Jebel Dhanna area in Al Gharbia. The experts came across the unsightly scene while taking part in a beach clean up campaign organised by EAD. Last December, they had come across two dead dugongs trapped in an abandoned drift gill net (Al Hayali), close to Abu Al Abyad Island. EAD experts had then confirmed that the dugong suffocated to death after being trapped in the gill net.

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Gabon centre refocuses on emerging diseases
Nature News - www.nature.com/news
29 Oct 2008
D Butler
Image courtesy of P. Psaila/SPL
Area: Gabon

Incoming director-general aims to reinvigorate medial institution.

. . . Gonzalez wants the centre to focus on emerging infectious diseases, which is his own research background, and to become an international centre for research into Ebola virus, arboviruses and other novel pathogens. New labs set up at the centre over the past five years have notched up some success in this area, notably the discoveries that bats are a reservoir of both Ebola and Marburg viruses. The centre has also strengthened its retrovirology research. "We are now in an ascendant phase for research, after a long period where that wasn't the case," says Gonzalez. He hopes to reinstate parasitology and malaria research, areas that were lost by staff departures. He also wants to add a new theme: how ecosystem biodiversity affects the emergence and transmission of disease. And, to complement the centre's existing tropical-forest stations, he plans to build a field station in the savannah in southern Gabon.

>>>FULL ARTICLE

Related News
>>>US urged to launch major campaign against emerging diseases

OTHER WILDLIFE HEALTH RELATED NEWS
Image courtesy of the Stefano Unterthiner of the Guardian's Wildlife photographer of the year