Species

Human Viruses Jumping to Wild Apes

• The research found that recent respiratory disease outbreaks among chimpanzee and gorilla populations come from great-ape researchers and ecotourists.
• Between 1999 and 2006 three chimpanzee study groups in Taï National Park in Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) suffered a total of five outbreaks of respiratory disease.
• Apes can also transmit diseases to people. In recent years outbreaks of the Ebola virus—a severe, often-fatal hemorraghic fever—have arisen in Africa, most likely sparked when a person contacted an infected ape. And the origin of the HIV virus has been traced to a group of chimpanzees in Cameroon.
• In 1994 in Serengeti National Park, 1,000 of 3,500 lions died of canine distemper, which they contracted from wild dogs. Humans were indirectly the culprit, since their domestic dogs helped spread the disease.
• In addition Asian elephant populations of Nepal are suffering as their numbers dwindle from human tuberculosis.

AIDS Origin Traced to Chimp Group in Cameroon

• Researchers have identified simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) in wild apes for the first time. The virus, which at some point jumped to humans as human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), has been found in chimpanzees in Cameroon, west-central Africa
• The virus was found in chimpanzees in southeastern Cameroon, where SIV infection rates were as high as 35 percent in some chimp populations.
• Hunters in the region who caught and ate chimps were probably the first to contract HIV, she adds.
• Eventually the virus ended up in a major metropolitan area, which would either be Kinshasa [Democratic Republic of the Congo] or Brazzaville [Republic of the Congo]," Hahn added. "That's where we believe the AIDS pandemic really started

Herons in Chicago Wetlands Survive Exposure to Banned Toxics

• The researchers found polychlorinated biphenyls, PCBs, and DDE in the eggs of the night-herons nesting in wetlands adjacent to Lake Calumet
• They found that the Lake Calumet herons appear to be picking up the contamination primarily from Lake Michigan by means of an invasive fish, the alewife
• Populations of black-crowned night-herons in the Lake Calumet wetlands have fluctuated in the last 20 years, peaking at more than 1,500 birds in the early to mid-1990s.
  Birders counted 447 black-crowns in Lake Calumet wetlands in 2005, the last year for which data are available
• "Wetlands have persisted in these areas because they were out on the back 40 of some company and people generally didn't have access," he said. These urban industrialized sites provide needed habitat, Levengood said, but are also "contaminated and degraded."