Wildlife Disease News Digest

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Is Life Too Hard for Honeybees?
Scientific American - www.sciam.com
31 Mar 2009
WL Sunshine
Photo credit: iStockphoto/Beverly Guhl Davis

Commercial honeybees are tough. They get trucked cross-country to pollinate vast crops, often while fed unnatural diets such as sugar water and soy flour. Their hives are treated with chemicals to deter parasites, and they're exposed to pesticides and fungicides in the fields where they work and feed. "I can feed you a diet of Hershey bars, keep you up all night, truck you around, and spray Raid in your face, and I guarantee you'll get sick," says Jerry Hayes, Florida's assistant chief of apiary inspection. "That's kind of what's happening to bees."

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Fish in U.S. Rivers Tainted With Common Medications
U.S. News and World Report - health.usnews.com
26 Mar 2009
Area: United States

Fish from five U.S. rivers were found to be tainted with traces of medications and common chemicals, according to a new study from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Baylor University. Fish from five U.S. rivers were found to be tainted with traces of medications and common chemicals, according to a new study from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Baylor University. The common antihistamine diphenhydramine (Benadryl), an anticonvulsant and two types of antidepressants were among the seven types of pharmaceuticals found in the tissue and livers of fish from waterways in or near Chicago, Dallas, Philadelphia, Phoenix and Orlando, Fla. Each river is considered "effluent-dominated," because they receive large amounts of wastewater discharge from nearby sewage treatment plants.

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Amphibians may develop immunity to fatal fungus
EurekAlert - www.eurekalert.org (Source: American Institute of Biological Sciences)
01 Apr 2009
Photo credit: John J. Mosesso

New evidence suggests that both acquired and innate immunity play a role in fighting off the fungal disease that is leading to dramatic declines in amphibian populations worldwide

Amphibian populations are declining worldwide, principally because of the spread of the fungal disease chytridiomycosis. Researchers know that some amphibian populations and species are innately more susceptible to the disease than others. Recent preliminary evidence, described in the April issue of BioScience, suggests also that individual amphibians can sometimes develop resistance to chytridiomycosis, which is caused by the fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd). Jonathan Q. Richmond, of the US Geological Survey, and three coauthors argue that researchers should broaden their studies of chytridiomycosis to include so-called acquired immunity, because this might improve predictive models of Bd's spread and so suggest ways to protect threatened frog and toad populations.

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Experts Say Ocean Acidification is a “Planet Changer”
Planetsave.com
29 Mar 2009
D Markham

Leading experts at the 2009 Aspen Environment Forum called ocean acidification caused by high levels of CO2 emissions a “planet changer”, and predicted that all coral in the ocean would be in danger of dying off by mid-century if we continued to burn fossil fuel at our current rate. Ken Caldeira of Carnegie Institution, Martin Hoffert of New York University, and Dawn Martin of SeaWeb told attendees at the session “The Ocean Carbon Cycle: Facing the Damage” that we haven’t taken the issue seriously enough, and expressed dismay at the lack of media coverage for such an important issue.

>>>FULL ARTICLE