January 20, 2009

TOP STORIES

Beekeepers fear sting of imported Australian hives
Yahoo News - news.yahoo.com (Source: Associated Press)
17 Jan 2009
G Burke
Photo credit: Associated Press
Area: United States

Beekeepers who are battling a mysterious ailment that led to the disappearance of millions of honeybees now fear the sting of imported Australian bees that they worry could outcompete their hives and might carry a deadly parasite unseen in the United States. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has allowed shipments of Australian bees to resume despite concerns by some of its own scientists. Australia had been airfreighting the insects across the Pacific for four years to replace hives devastated by the perplexing colony collapse disorder. But six weeks ago the Australian government abruptly stopped the shipments, saying it could no longer be certain the country was free of a smaller, aggressive bee that has infested areas near the Great Barrier Reef, U.S. officials said.




January Science Picks -- Leads, Feeds and Story Seeds
USGS Newsroom - www.usgs.gov/newsroom
16 Jan 2009

Wildlife Related Highlights
  • New Discoveries to Help Protect Endangered and At-Risk Species
  • Studying Avian Influenza: Tracking Wild Birds in India and Hong Kong
  • Calling All Black-Legged Kittiwakes!
  • HealthMap: Alerts on Global Wildlife and Human Diseases



Fish exposed to antidepressants in the wild
EarthSky - www.earthsky.org
19 Jan 2009
Photo credit: species snob

Antidepressants may benefit people, but they’re not much help to fish. That’s according to Melissa Schultz, an environmental chemist at the College of Wooster, in Ohio. She said that antidepressants and other medications we excrete and flush down the toilet are winding up in rivers, possibly harming wildlife.

Melissa Schultz: We’re just beginning to understand how these chemicals affect fish.

Schultz teamed up with biologists who exposed a group of farm-raised minnows to trace levels of antidepressants — in particular, to a drug known as Effexor — and then analyzed the results.




Global Warming Linked To European Viral Epidemic
ScienceDaily - www.sciencedaily.com (Source: International Journal of Health Geographics)
16 Jan 2009

An epidemic of the viral disease nephropathia epidemica (NE) has been linked to increases in the vole population caused by hotter summers, milder winters and increased seedcrop production by broadleaf trees. New research links outbreaks of this rodent-borne disease to known effects of global warming. Dr Jan Clement from the Department of Microbiology & Immunology at Belgium's Rega Institute (University of Leuven) worked with a team of medical researchers and bioscience-engineers to investigate outbreaks of NE in Belgium. Dr. Clement founded the Belgian Hantavirus Reference Centre in 1985, and noted that of the 2,200 cases since then, 828 (37.6%) occurred in just the last three years, 2005-2007. The epidemic has been shown to extend to neighboring countries such as France, Germany, The Netherlands, and Luxembourg.




National HPAI Early Detection Data System (HEDDS) Update
NBII Wildlife Disease Information Node
19 Jan 2009
Area: United States

Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza Early Detection Data System (HEDDS) is an avian influenza data sharing repository. NBII and a network of partners across the nation have created HEDDS to hold data from different surveillance strategies and to provide a comprehensive view of national sampling efforts.

Recent HEDDS Activity
  • Jan 16, 2009: 298 samples and tests were added to HEDDS for 2008. Total is now 75,403.
  • Jan 12, 2009: The LPAI H5N1 results table has been updated with information on samples collected on Dec 29, 2008 from a Canada goose in Goshen county, WY.
  • Jan 9, 2009: 992 samples and tests were added to HEDDS for 2008. Total is now 75,105.



LAST WEEK'S TOP READ LINKS



OTHER WILDLIFE HEALTH RELATED NEWS
Photo credit: Richard Cuthbert, RSPB

Avian Influenza

at Tuesday, January 20, 2009

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