emerging diseases

A study in the Nov. 2 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences is the first to fully document the demographic impacts of West Nile virus on North American bird populations. Data from bird-banding stations shows more species were hit than suspected, and half of those have yet to recover.

Work at Washington University in St. Louis, just published in EcoHealth, shows that the ecology of fear, like other concepts from predator-prey theory, also extends to parasites. Raccoons and squirrels would give up food, the study demonstrated, if the area was infested with larval ticks. At some level, they are weighing the value of the abandoned food against the risk of being parasitized.