Impact of Disease

Question 1

What happened to the Serengeti Wild dogs?

Answer 1

• Numbers had been decreasing since 70s
• Two of six packs died due to rabies
• The rest were caught and vaccinated
• Despite this they had disappeared by the early 90s
• Was it rabies or another disease?
• Was it small pop size?
• Was it stress of being caught?

Question 2

What are the issues with disease and conservation?

Answer 2

• Often hard to know what’s happened
• Maybe a time lag
• Should we intervene?
• Spill over - diseases spreading between wild and domestic species.

Question 3

What are EIDs?

Answer 3

Emerging Infectious Disease.
Three categories:
- Spill over from domestic to wild animals
- Via human intervention
- No obvious human or domestic animal link.

Question 4

How can human activity increase disease risks?

Answer 4

• By increasing contact rates between hosts and their parasites
• By increasing the susceptibility of hosts e.g. through stress.

Question 5

How `can human activities increase disease contact rates?

Answer 5

• Altering host density e.g. habitat fragmentation
• Altering parasite density
• New transmission routes
• Introducing reservoir hosts.

Question 6

How can human activities affect host susceptibility?

Answer 6

Affects host ability to mount an immune response due to:

• stress
• environmental pollution
• nutritional status.

Question 7

How can conservationists deal with disease?

Answer 7

• Vaccinations
• Translocation
• Rehabilitation
• Control disease in domestic stock.