Wildlife Disease News Digest

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Death adders eat fatal meal
Science Alert - www.sciencealert.com.au (Source: University of Sydney)
20 May 2009
Photo credit: iStockphoto
Area: Australia

One of Australia's most famous (and unpopular) native predators, the death adder, is actually playing a role in its own downfall.

Unlike most Australian snakes, death adders don't wander around searching for their prey - instead, they lie in ambush and wriggle their tail-tip in the air so that the tip looks like a small grub or worm. A frog or lizard that sees the wriggling tail will rush across to grab a tasty meal - and find a hungry snake instead, so likely will end up as the snake's dinner.

Professor Rick Shine and his colleagues Dr Mattias Hagman and Dr Ben Phillips noticed that death adder numbers plummeted after cane toads invaded their study site near Darwin. The scientists wondered why so they set up trials with captive snakes, and found that the death adders had fallen into an "evolutionary trap".

>>>FULL ARTICLE

Cited Journal Article
>>>Fatal attraction: adaptations to prey on native frogs imperil snakes after invasion of toxic toads. Proc Biol Sci. 2009 May 6. Epub ahead of print.

Fish kill cause remains a mystery
BaldwinCountynow.com - www.baldwincountynow.com
15 May 2009
C Chapman
Area: Baldwin County, Alabama, USA - Map It

The cause of a widespread fish kill has not yet been determined by Auburn University researchers, according to Kevin Anson, a biologist with the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources Marine Resources Division.

“The (initial) test results were inconclusive,” he said Friday. “They will continue to incubate culture material and have an answer sometime next week. It’s unusual, but it’s happened before.”

Rotting fish have been accumulating on Eastern Shore beaches from Village Point Park in Daphne to Bon Secour over the last couple of weeks, and scientists are puzzled. So far, more than 1,000 hardhead catfish and a handful of other species have washed up dead.

>>>FULL ARTICLE

National HPAI Early Detection Data System (HEDDS) Update
NBII Wildlife Disease Information Node
19 May 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

May 15, 2009: 15 samples and tests were added to HEDDS for 2009. Total is now 250.
May 15, 2009: 53 samples and tests were added to HEDDS for 2009. Total is now 235.
May 7, 2009: 14 samples and tests were added to HEDDS for 2009. Total is now 182.

>>>HEDDS' LPAI H5N1 Results Table
>>>For more about HEDDS

OTHER WILDLIFE HEALTH RELATED NEWS
Photo credit: Jeff Foott/Discovery Channel Images/Getty