Wildlife Biology



Wildlife Biology Updated 26 August 2009

Bolen and Robinson (2003) Ch. 8 – Wildlife Diseases

pathogens – infectious, disease-producing agents (e.g., bacteria, viruses, rickettsias, parasites, fungi)

disease – any prolonged, serious deviation from the normal condition; an abnormality that prevents an animal from living and reproducing in a normal manner

etiology – study of the cause of disease; natural history of the disease; mainly causative studies

epidemiology – study of epidemics – cause and spread; study of outbreaks of disease, statistics of spread and devastation

endemic –localized; inherent to a local population (i. e., it is usually in that area all the time)

parasitic disease – host and parasite usually have a long evolutionary history; parasite lives off host (but host usually lives an almost-normal life)

reservoir –population where a disease is either dormant or active, but it can serve as a place to infect or reinfect other animals (sort of a “storage” place for the disease)

vector – any organism that carries and transmits pathogenic microorganisms from one host to another; commonly an insect or arthropod

disease/parasites – can often weaken an animal or get a foothold because the animal is already weak from something else

This chapter largely addresses epizootiology, the “how” and “why” of diseases in either their enzootic (chronic) or epizootic (eruptive) states in wildlife populations.

Enzootic – the chronic level of disease frequency, that is, a low but constant occurrence of a disease in a population.

Epizootic – outbreak of disease in an animal population; large numbers of animals die in a short period.

Why Study Wildlife Disease? - read this section – very interesting; mentioned many diseases including the following:

- 22,000 mule deer shot when outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease (in 1925-26 in

California)

- brucellosis – and the Yellowstone herd

- tsetse flies – carrying sleeping sickness in Africa – hooved wildlife killed to try

and control the flies

- avian cholera

- kill mosquitoes in sensitive wetlands

Know Table 8-1 --- “Selected Diseases of Wildlife” excellent table that lists diseases, main target species, and characteristics of the disease

Parasitic Diseases:

sarcoptic mange – see table

liver fluke (Fascioloidea magna) – found in deer; not usually fatal; quite noticeable in northern tier states – Minnesota, Michigan; can affect cattle – more serious in them; deer serve as reservoirs for flukes that infect livestock

- clay soils hold water; this allows a snail (which is the intermediate host) to live and perpetuate the disease; sandy soils are better – harder for the parasites to survive

brainworm – (Pneumostrongylus tenuis) – parasitic nematode that matures in meninges of the brain; in deer, it causes little harm; however, in moose, it is usually fatal (it damages the CNS, paralysis, death)

duck malaria – (Leucocytozoon simondi) – blood parasite transmitted by blackflies; waterfowl are carriers; it often kills young birds – it attacks the blood cells, causing anemia

Bacterial Diseases:

Brucellosis – (Brucella abortus) – see Table 8-1; cattle can pick it up and transmit it to humans by milk; it is called undulant fever in humans

Leptospirosis – similar to brucellosis; in ungulates; can infect cattle

Tularemia – (Francisella tularensis) – “rabbit fever” – can be passed to humans by body fluids or blood; passes from rabbit to rabbit by ticks (hunting seasons are set for later in the year when most vectors have died; this lessens the chance of infection of humans)

Botulism – (Clostridium botulinium) – read in book; know life cycle in Fig. 8-5; dead invertebrates and maggots harbor the toxin; ducks ingest it and die; make more carcasses for maggots to infect – keeps the cycle going

Viral Diseases:

Epizootic hemorrhagic disease (EHD) – (found in white-tailed deer in 1955)

- lesions throughout body, especially in the GI tract, also heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, spleen

- terminal signs – bloody urine, labored breathing

- they think it has an arthropod vector (midge)

- animal usually dies within 3-4 days

- external symptoms – loss of appetite, weakness, salivation, fever, hemorrhages of oral cavity; coma and death follow 3-36 hours of these symptoms

- especially affects deer – up to 90% mortality of infected animals;

- read in book

Encephalitis –

- arthropod vector – mosquito

- equine encephalitis – can cause death and illness in children- can cause permanent damage to nervous system – not as severe in adults (usually) – drowsiness, GI tract disturbances

- often large areas are sprayed for mosquitos

rabies – virus is transmitted in saliva; most common in skunks, foxes, bats, raccoons

- 3-8 weeks incubation in dogs, less in smaller animals; more in humans (30-60 days)

- 3 phases of rabies:

o prodromal phase –

▪ incubation period

▪ subtle changes in behavior – not very noticeable

o excitative phase –

▪ “furious” phase (not all animals show this phase)

▪ dogs roam, fight, attack

▪ close to death

o paralytic phase –

▪ ends in death; laryngeal musculature is paralyzed, cannot swallow oral secretions (hence the saying “foaming at the mouth”

- some animals show no clinical signs – just crawl into a hole and die

- there is no cure for rabies once the pathogens have begun to grow (i.e., after the incubation period)

- in the recent past, humans could get rabies shots in the abdomen; however, a recent article about the human case of rabies in Oct 2000 said that humans can now get the shots in the arm (however, the shots must be given very soon after the person has been exposed to rabies or they do not work)

Diseases and Biological Controls

1. European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) was introduced into Australia in 1859. (They actually tried several times before this to introduce this species, but efforts failed.) Populations exploded- helped “overgraze” the range, contributed to erosion; competed with sheep for food

- myxomatosis (a pox-virus) was introduced in 1950 to control the rabbits; it killed off many rabbits while having little impact on native marsupials

- myxomatosis – is spread by a variety of arthropods, especially mosquitos

- the natural host for myxomatosis is Sylvilagus sp. – the pathogenic effects are “self-limiting”

- right now, rabbits and the disease seem to be “co-evolving”; some rabbits survived and developed resistance; current strains of disease seem to be less virulent

- another disease, rabbit calicivirus disease (RCD), is currently killing rabbits in Australia; it appeared mysteriously in China in 1984, and then spread in Asia and into Europe

- RCD causes extensive internal blood clotting, lapsing into a coma, and death within 36 hours

- in 1995, RCD was undergoing host-specificity tests on an island off Australia; disease escaped accidentally and hit the rabbits on the Australian mainland

- so far, disease seems only to be killing the rabbits, but wholesale killing of rabbits might cause other ecological problems --food base gone for some predators, lots of decaying carcasses; might cause more sheep grazing if rabbits are gone (more erosion and overgrazing); on the other hand, some native plants that have been suppressed by the rabbits might recover when the rabbits are gone

2. Bighorn sheep are susceptible to bluetongue or “soremuzzle” – also infects a variety of wild and domestic ruminants (e.g., white-tailed deer, elk, pronghorn, sheep, goats)

- they think domestic sheep flocks carry it to bighorn sheep

- they tried using gnats as “mobile syringes” to vaccinate bighorn sheep- they give the gnats a blood meal of bluetongue vaccine before they release them (this species of gnat is the natural vector of the disease)

“New” Diseases

Hantaviral pulmonary syndrome (HPS)– outbreak in New Mexico a few years ago; hantavirus is carried by small rodents, mainly deer mice, but also by pinon mice, cotton rats, and cliff chipmunks

- humans can get it by inhaling or ingesting dust contaminated with urine or feces from infected mice; often fatal in humans; lungs and other organs stop working; when humans get it, it is often indoors where the urine/feces are in a more enclosed area and concentrations can get high

Conjunctivitis in songbirds – caused by the microorganism, Mycoplasma gallisepticum, not found until recently in wildlife populations; the infection causes respiratory disease in domestic poultry and other pen-reared birds

- in house finches, it produces conjunctivitis characterized by crusty, swollen eyes; first found in house finches in mid-Atlantic states in 1994; has now spread across eastern half of North America (might be spread at birdfeeders)

- has now also been recently detected in American goldfinches (but do not yet know the extent of the disease)

West Nile Virus – gets its name from the region in Uganda where it was initially in 1937. In 1999, cases suddenly appeared in humans in New York City and the disease has since spread. They think it got carried to the US by an infected migrating bird or a imported bird. Transmitted by mosquitoes from bird to bird or from birds to humans. Can cause encephalitis in humans.

Mad Cow Disease – or bovine spongioform encephalopathy (BSE) – is one form of a group of infections known collectively as TSE, transmissible spongioform encephalopathies. Pathogens responsible for TSE are prions – short for proteinaceous infectious particles – lack DNA and thus do no reproduce genetically as do bacteria or viruses- destroys brain tissue.

Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) – is a type of TSE – spreading in elk and deer. See notes from talk.

Lyme Disease – is now the most commonly reported arthropod-borne disease of humans in US

- 89,000 cases in 49 states and DC between 1992 and 1998, with an increase

from 9896 cases in 1992 to 16,802 in 1998.

- pathogen is a spirochete bacterium, Borrelia burgdorferi, which is transmitted in the NE US by the deer tick, although other vectors are known

- the disease gained national attention in 1975 when an unusually high incidence of “juvenile rheumatoid arthritis” was mistakenly diagnosed in Lyme, Connecticut

o causes bulls-eye rash around site of bite (but not always)

o joint pain

o in advanced stages, attacks of arthritis, abnormal heart rhythm, and neurological difficulties

o symptoms might not appear for several weeks or months

o treated with antibiotics

- deer are the hosts for adult deer ticks; but deer are not reservoirs for the spirochetes

- deer ticks are often carried on white-footed mice and deer mice and they serve as reservoirs for the spirochetes; they think that ear tags may have increased the incidence of deer ticks because the mice have a harder time grooming their ears when they have tags and/or the tagged ears attract the ticks

- read about more details of tick life cycle in book

Wildlife Diseases and Humans

Plague:

- about 20 million people died of the “Black Death” (bubonic plague) in the 14th century (about 1/3 of the population of Europe died)

- sylvatic plague in animals is caused by the same pathogen that causes bubonic plague, i.e., Yersinia pestis (a type of bacterium)

- sylvatic plague is carried by fleas and is often found in communal rodents like prairie dogs or certain kinds of ground squirrels (although many other animals can carry the fleas also)

- burrows of these rodents can sometimes harbor the fleas; entire prairie dog towns are sometimes treated for fleas (but as you can imagine, this is hard on the whole ecosystem)

- people can get the sylvatic plague from prairie dogs or other animals; however, if caught early enough, it can be treated with antibiotics

Tularemia - humans can get it from skinning rabbits – see above

(some rabbits found in West Fargo a few week ago were believed to have had tularemia)

Rabies – see above -- read more in your book – lots of interesting details and implications for wildlife management

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