What's Health Got to do with it?
Hello again, everyone!
This lab update will focus on the importance of health and disease for wildlife conservation. We are currently in the midst of the Anthropocene, which is a period of time characterized by human dominance of earth’s systems. Human expansion has created a host of problems for wildlife, including habitat destruction, environmental toxification, climate change, overhunting/overfishing, and introduction of invasive plants and animals which compete with native species for progressively limited resources. As a result of these stressors, wildlife populations have declined by over 60% (on average) within the last 30 years, and current extinction rates are 100 - 1,000 times higher than historical levels.
As wildlife populations grow smaller and more isolated, they become increasingly susceptible to the effects of disease. Some diseases cause direct mortality and contribute to local and global extinctions. Others have more subtle effects, including immune suppression and reproductive failure, which can affect individual wellness and population stability. Some diseases only cause significant problems in young and old individuals, or in animals that are weakened or immunosuppressed. While the effects of certain diseases are easy to predict in isolation, they can change substantially when an animal is infected with more than one pathogen, a situation that is very common in wildlife. Furthermore, many wildlife diseases are understudied and their effects only become obvious once a mortality event has already occurred – a situation that is obviously less than ideal. This illustrates the importance of proactively understanding wildlife diseases, especially in species that are already threatened by other factors.
Studying disease in wild populations allows us to identify potential threats to species conservation, develop protocols for disease prevention and treatment, and minimize the risk of disease transmission during conservation actions (i.e. translocations, reintroduction programs, establishment of captive assurance colonies). However, some types of diseases (like RNA viruses) are poorly characterized in wildlife. Failure to study this important group of viruses may result in an incomplete understanding of conservation threats, and ultimately impact the success of management actions designed to save species.
Our study seeks to fill this knowledge gap in state -endangered Blanding’s turtles by screening for four RNA viruses in a managed population in Illinois. This proposed research will complement other health data that we are concurrently collecting in this population, including bloodwork (hematology, plasma biochemistries, protein electrophoresis), disease screening (blood parasites, ranaviruses, herpesviruses, intranuclear coccidiosis, leptospirosis, Mycoplasma sp., etc.), body condition assessment, and nesting success. When analyzed together, these data will provide robust information on the presence and clinical effects of RNA viruses in this population. Ultimately, this may help us plan more effective conservation strategies for Blanding’s turtles in Illinois and beyond.
I’d like to wrap up for today by recognizing our donors: thanks to Brenda Adamovicz, Krista Keller, Kathleen Gartlan, Nataliya Cullen, Dianne Schwartzman, Greg Lewbart, and David Esopi! We are now 14% of the way to our funding goal! The next lab update will focus on fieldwork methods and introduce our awesome Blanding’s Turtle Team! Stay tuned for more!
Thanks for your support of this project!
-Dr. Laura
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