Pathfinder
Editor, Senior Moderator
Deadly Brain Disease Is Driving Swamp Birds Insane
A mysterious disease has been killing ducks and eagles in Florida?s wetlands, and endangered snail kites may be its next victims.
By Hannah Waters
PUBLISHED MAY 18, 2016
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Meanwhile, across the Florida border, University of Georgia ecologist Susan Wilde has been tracking a mysterious lethal disease known as avian vacuolar myelinopathy, or AVM. The disease?s sole physical traces are microscopic brain lesions, visible in birds only after they go mad and die.
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Lake Toho in particular worried her. Filled with exotic apple snails, the lake was a major breeding site for snail kites as they recovered. The lake is also lush with hydrilla, and the invasive snails thrive on the plants, feeding on its leaves and scaling its stalks for a breath of fresh air at the surface.
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She brought Lake Toho hydrilla back to Georgia for a series of experiments on chickens, a laboratory stand-in for wild birds. She fed algae-covered hydrilla to exotic apple snails, and then fed those snails to chickens to see if they developed AVM.
Within two weeks, three of the five chickens began acting strangely, she reports in a study in the April edition of the Journal of Wildlife Diseases. After a necropsy, all five birds had the microscopic brain lesions characteristic of the disease.
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To date, no snail kites are known to have died from AVM. But to diagnose the disease, a dead bird has to be found and necropsied within a day, before the brain lesions decompose. If a snail kite dies of AVM while perching over Lake Toho, its body will fall straight into the water, never to be found or diagnosed.
Meanwhile, the disease has killed thousands of waterbirds, as well as nearly 200 bald eagles and a handful of geese, hawks, owls, killdeer, and probably more avian species. That makes Wilde and Meyer worried about the snail kites.
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http://news.nationalgeographic.com/...s-kitebirds&utm_campaign=Content&sf26534326=1
A mysterious disease has been killing ducks and eagles in Florida?s wetlands, and endangered snail kites may be its next victims.
By Hannah Waters
PUBLISHED MAY 18, 2016
...
Meanwhile, across the Florida border, University of Georgia ecologist Susan Wilde has been tracking a mysterious lethal disease known as avian vacuolar myelinopathy, or AVM. The disease?s sole physical traces are microscopic brain lesions, visible in birds only after they go mad and die.
...
Lake Toho in particular worried her. Filled with exotic apple snails, the lake was a major breeding site for snail kites as they recovered. The lake is also lush with hydrilla, and the invasive snails thrive on the plants, feeding on its leaves and scaling its stalks for a breath of fresh air at the surface.
...
She brought Lake Toho hydrilla back to Georgia for a series of experiments on chickens, a laboratory stand-in for wild birds. She fed algae-covered hydrilla to exotic apple snails, and then fed those snails to chickens to see if they developed AVM.
Within two weeks, three of the five chickens began acting strangely, she reports in a study in the April edition of the Journal of Wildlife Diseases. After a necropsy, all five birds had the microscopic brain lesions characteristic of the disease.
...
To date, no snail kites are known to have died from AVM. But to diagnose the disease, a dead bird has to be found and necropsied within a day, before the brain lesions decompose. If a snail kite dies of AVM while perching over Lake Toho, its body will fall straight into the water, never to be found or diagnosed.
Meanwhile, the disease has killed thousands of waterbirds, as well as nearly 200 bald eagles and a handful of geese, hawks, owls, killdeer, and probably more avian species. That makes Wilde and Meyer worried about the snail kites.
...
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/...s-kitebirds&utm_campaign=Content&sf26534326=1