Wildlife Disease News Digest

TOP STORIES

COMMENTARY: In the Path of the Dinosaurs
Emagazine - www.emagazine.com
08 Jun 2008
M Schechter
Image courtesy of Julie Larsen Maher/WCS

Frogs are Disappearing Fast—Amphibian Ark is trying to Protect Remaining Species. A 2-Part Series.

Thousands of Kihansi spray toads, all less than an inch long, once thrived in the Kihansi River gorge in Tanzania. Harnessing energy from this Global Diversity Hotspot’s waterfalls, the Tanzanian government and the World Bank built a dam there in the 1990s. The dam, in turn, brought the species to the brink by drying out their wetland habitat. As their population dwindled in 2000, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) brought 500 toads to the Bronx Zoo in New York, and others to Ohio’s Toledo Zoo.

Now, these captive toads are the only survivors of their species. Once the chytrid skin fungus spread to the Kihansi gorge, the species became extinct in the wild. Thanks to the zoos’ sanctuaries, however, their numbers are steadily growing. The Bronx Zoo is taking part in 2008’s Year of the Frog, an awareness and fundraising campaign organized by the international program, the Amphibian Ark formed by The World Conservation Union’s Conservation Breeding Specialist Group and Amphibian Specialist Group, along with the World Association of Zoos and Animals (WAZA).

>>>FULL ARTICLE

Second in a 2-Part Series
>>>COMMENTARY: Fight for the Frogs

Google backs plans that track animal and rare diseases
Merchant News - www.mns.co.uk
17 Jun 2008
Area: United States

Google are [sic] one of the companies backing the project and have launched a ‘predict and prevent’ programme which aims to set up a network for forecasting emerging threats ‘before they become local, regional, or global crisis.’ Scientists are now hoping to find the world’s last remaining viruses which could trigger new diseases in humans. It is thought hundreds of new varieties may still be in the wild or in remote parts of the world in indigenous populations. Deadly outbreaks of Sars and Ebola diseases in recent years have caused huge health scares and officials are very interested in using modern gene-hunting technology to pinpoint pathogens before they have chance to pass on to the wider population.

. . . Dr Woolhouse added “We are in the middle of a revolution in gene technology. For the first time, we have the means to trace any pathogen that has infected or is capable of infecting a person.” Chips have been developed in recent years that can identify every known human virus from blood or tissue samples and machines have been designed that can unravel the genetic make-up of new organisms in minutes. Part of the hunt for new viruses, scientists would study populations in the most remote places on earth to detect unknown viruses in their blood. Other parts of the research would study animals to see if any carry diseases capable of infecting humans.

>>>FULL ARTICLE

Coral eating starfish retreat from reef
ScienceAlert - www.sciencealert.com.au (Source: Australian Institute of Marine Science)
18 Jun 2008
Image courtesy of AIMS LTMP
Area: Great Barrier Reef, Australia

The latest report of Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) Long Term Monitoring Program (LTMP) has both good news and bad news about the Great Barrier Reef. The good news is that the third recorded crown-of-thorns starfish (COTS) outbreak is waning after more than 14 years. The outbreak has worked its way down the Reef since the early 1990s. Crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks account for the largest proportion of coral mortality detected by the AIMS surveys.

Fewer starfish were seen in AIMS’ surveys of GBR reefs in 2007 than in any year for the past two decades and last year was the first since 1985 in which there were no outbreaks of the starfish in the Swain Reefs off Yeppoon. But the LTMP team has also detected a rise in coral disease in some parts of the Reef, notably those areas where hard coral cover is high. Head of the LTMP, Dr Hugh Sweatman, said that Status Report No.8 on the state of the Great Barrier Reef represented a synthesis of monitoring data collected up to the 2007 field season. The LTMP has been surveying the Great Barrier Reef since 1993 and findings from 2006 and 2007 have not been reported before.

>>>FULL ARTICLE

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Mysterious disease still killing bats
Addison County Independent - www.addisonindependent.com
16 Jun 2008
K Flagg
Area: Vermont United States - Map It

. . . Youngbaer joined between 80 and 90 other scientists, wildlife specialists and conservationists in Albany, N.Y., last week to discuss the mysterious syndrome behind these die-offs, which have escalated from just two incidents in caves in New York a year ago to documented mortalities at caves and mines in New York, Vermont, Massachusetts and Connecticut, with suspected sites in Pennsylvania. The syndrome is estimated to have killed hundreds of thousands of bats this year. Last week’s conference brought together individuals from two countries and over 25 organizations to identify the most urgent research questions for the scientists and management agencies struggling to unravel the causes fueling the unprecedented bat mortalities.

. . . Conference participants also drafted plans for collection and contamination protocols, field diagnostics, summer data collection surveys, maternity colony assessments and communication plans, among other priorities, to tackle WNS in the coming months. “Through this last winter, we thought this was strictly a winter issue,” said Darling. He and many others close to the issue hoped that the bats that survived the winter, when they came out of hibernation this spring, would regain their strength. Reports so far, however, are grim. “We continue to get reports of dead and dying bats throughout much of the state,” he said. “It’s clear that the animals are still dying out there.”

>>>FULL ARTICLE

West Nile Virus Prevalent in Wildlife near urban areas [Press Release]
E-Wire - www.ewire.com
17 Jun 2008

In a paper published by the leading scientific journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, scientists at Wildlife Trust (www.wildlifetrust.org) reported on results from a recent study of West Nile virus seroprevalence in wild mammals living in and around urbanized areas. The study was conducted in the mid-Atlantic region of the U.S. and is the first-of-its-kind research focusing on West Nile virus exposure in wild mammals in a spatially-explicit context. The research shows that several common peridomestic wild mammal species are frequently exposed to West Nile virus and identifies factors that influence exposure rates, including age and date of capture. It also shows that West Nile virus transmission intensity is higher in human-dominated areas.

Evidence of exposure to West Nile virus has been found in a wide variety of domestic and wild mammals including rodents, ungulates, carnivores, bats and primates. Andres Gomez, a doctoral fellow with Wildlife Trust and leading author of the article said “this study provides several insights into the ecology of transmission of West Nile virus in mammals. We demonstrate that mammal exposure shows significant variation in space and time, which is a critical requirement for using wild mammals as sentinels of human infection risk.” “West Nile virus was introduced into the western hemisphere in New York in 1999.

>>>FULL PRESS RELEASE

Cited Journal Article
>>>Land Use and West Nile Virus Seroprevalence in Wild Mammals. Emerg Infect Dis. 2008 Jun; 14(6): 962-5.

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