Taxonomy term

disease

Mammoths may have suffered from bone disease

The demise of mammoths, which went extinct by the end of the Pleistocene about 12,000 years ago, is thought to have been brought about by a combination of climate change and overhunting by early humans. A new study indicates that another culprit might have contributed as well: Mammoth bones retrieved from Northern Eurasia — from sedimentary strata close to the animals’ last known appearance in the fossil record — appear to show evidence for bone diseases associated with nutrient deficiencies.
 
28 Feb 2016

Widespread malaria risk from African dams

Large dams cause more than 1 million cases of malaria annually in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the authors of a new study published in Malaria Journal.
 
17 Jan 2016

Marine mammals blamed for first New World tuberculosis

When Europeans arrived in the Americas they introduced an array of new infectious diseases that decimated the native populations. Now, a new genetics-based study published in Nature shows that the emergence of tuberculosis in Peru seems to have predated the arrival of the Spanish — and that seals and sea lions may be to blame instead for the ancient infections.

13 Jan 2015

New federal guidelines aim to combat bat-killing fungus

On May 17, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released a new nationwide plan to curb the spread of White Nose Syndrome (WNS), the mysterious fungal disease that has killed upward of 2 million hibernating bats since emerging in 2006.

18 May 2011

June 9, 1938: Huang He Diversion: Largest Act of Environmental Warfare in History

By Nate Burgess

The Huang He (Yellow River) has been called “China’s Sorrow.” The name pays tribute to the millions killed by the river’s churning, muddy waters in a long history of dramatic diversions and massive floods. One of the most notable recent events in the river’s troubled history occurred in June 1938, when the Nationalist Chinese Army diverted the river to block invading Japanese troops. In both number of deaths and geographic scale, this event was the largest act of environmental warfare in modern history.

09 Jun 2009

Bats and white-nose syndrome = VA cavers, please stay out

Blogging on EARTH

The name sounds pretty innocuous, but white-nose syndrome (WNS) is rapidly becoming very bad news for bats; in just a couple of years, hundreds of thousands of hibernating bats in the northeastern United States with this fungus have died. Among the most affected are the little brown bat and the endangered Indiana bat.

26 Mar 2009