̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Zoological Society of London

Climate change threat to seabirds must be properly considered for their conservation to be effective

jg533 — Wed, 09 Mar 2022 05:01:00 +0000

Seabirds such as kittiwakes and puffins are being put at higher risk because of a disconnect between conservation efforts on the ground, and research knowledge of the threats to these birds from climate change. However, a new study has found that better integration of the two is possible to safeguard biodiversity.

̽��ֱ��study, published today in the Journal of Applied Ecology, involved leading conservation experts at the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, BirdLife International, RSPB and the IUCN Climate Change Specialist Group.

It revealed that the climate change threats highlighted by European seabird conservation groups are often poorly understood. In addition, almost one third of possible conservation interventions aimed at reducing the impacts of climate change on seabirds have conflicting or lack of evidence on their effectiveness.

̽��ֱ��team has proposed an approach for connecting conservation research and management, which they call a ‘pressure-state-response framework.’ This provides a platform for identifying missing information and areas where connections need to be tightened to improve conservation outcomes.

Co-author Dr Silviu Petrovan - a researcher in the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology - said: “Climate change is happening at frightful pace, but our understanding and testing of practical responses for protecting biodiversity are lagging behind. This must change if we are to make substantive improvements - and seabirds are an urgent example.”

Lead author and ZSL Institute of Zoology post-doctoral fellow, Henry Hakkinen said: “There is a real opportunity here to identify missing information, and marry existing research on the risks of climate change with effective conservation and wildlife management.”

"Through our work we have identified several climate change threats and conservation actions that are well understood, but also several threats that are poorly understood and several actions that have very limited or mixed evidence on their effectiveness. These gaps urgently need addressing if we want to work out how we can best help seabirds adapt to climate change and survive.

“Seabirds in Europe are heavily researched and receive quite a lot of conservation attention. They are also heavily impacted by climate change, so are a good species group to start with."

For the study, the team sent a series of surveys to more than 180 seabird conservation practitioners across Western Europe. They identified major knowledge gaps and began tallying up ways in which conservation action could address some of the major threats posed to the species by climate change.

For example, 45% of those surveyed said that disease risk from climate change was a serious threat to seabird populations, but the study showed that more needed to be done to monitor the effectiveness of conservation tools available to practitioners to address this. Hand rearing and vaccinations are suggested tools that could help.

“We need to be pragmatic and evidence-based - but also bold, and explore new approaches including, where appropriate, supporting colonisations of new habitat or even creating new habitats or breeding structures for seabirds. Bridging climate change research and conservation action has never been more important,” said Petrovan.

Seabirds represent one of the most threatened groups of birds in the world, with almost half of all species in decline. They are also significantly directly and indirectly threatened by climate change – for example by heatwaves, extreme wind and rain, and changes in food availability in response to changing climatic conditions, which lead to lack of fish for chicks during the nesting season.

Frameworks that link pressures on the environment, their effect on biodiversity and ways society can respond are often used in global policy-making to translate research to action. ̽��ֱ��team suggests that their ‘pressure-state-response framework’ could be applied to specific groups of species or ecosystems to identify existing gaps between research and conservation solutions for wildlife most at risk.

ZSL Senior Research Fellow and senior author Dr Nathalie Pettorelli said: “Our study provides an easily transferable approach for identifying missing information, and areas where connections between research and management need to be tightened to improve conservation outcomes.”

This research was funded by Stichting Ave Fenix Europa.

Reference

Hakkinen, H. et al: ‘Linking climate change vulnerability research and evidence on conservation action effectiveness to safeguard seabird populations in Western Europe.’ Journal of Applied Ecology, March 2022.

Adapted from a press release by the Zoological Society of London.

A new study shows how knowledge of climate change threats could be better connected with conservation efforts to help protect seabirds and other at-risk species.

Bridging climate change research and conservation action has never been more important.

Silviu Petrovan

Seppo Häkkinen, Third-Eye Photography

Puffins

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Living Planet Report reveals 68% decline in global wildlife populations since 1970

Anonymous — Wed, 09 Sep 2020 23:01:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��WWF’s Living Planet Report 2020 presents a comprehensive overview of the state of our natural world as captured by the Living Planet Index (LPI) of the Zoological Society of London (ZSL). Almost 21,000 populations of over 4,000 vertebrate species were tracked between 1970 and 2016, with contributions from over 125 experts from around the world.

“ ̽��ֱ��Living Planet Report 2020 underlines how humanity’s increasing destruction of nature is having catastrophic impacts not only on wildlife populations, but on human health and all aspects of our lives,” said Marco Lambertini, Director General of WWF International.

He added: “In the midst of a global pandemic, it is now more important than ever to take unprecedented and coordinated global action to halt and reverse the loss of biodiversity and wildlife populations across the globe by the end of the decade.”

̽��ֱ��report shows that the main cause of the dramatic decline in species populations on land is habitat loss and degradation, including deforestation, driven by food production. Factors believed to increase the planet’s vulnerability to pandemics, including land-use change and the use and trade of wildlife, are also drivers of the decline.

Endangered species include the eastern lowland gorilla, whose numbers in the Kahuzi-Biega National Park, Democratic Republic of Congo have seen an estimated 87 percent decline between 1994 and 2015 mostly due to illegal hunting, and the African grey parrot in southwest Ghana, whose numbers fell by up to 99 percent between 1992 and 2014 due to threats posed by trapping for the wild bird trade and habitat loss.

Wildlife populations found in freshwater habitats have suffered a decline of 84 per cent - the starkest average population decline in any biome. For example, the spawning population of the Chinese sturgeon in China’s Yangtze river declined by 97 percent between 1982 and 2015 due to the damming of the waterway.

̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge zoologists Dr Lynn Dicks and Dr Edgar Turner contributed a summary of global insect decline to the report. They reveal evidence of recent, rapid declines in insect abundance and diversity in some places, but not everywhere. ̽��ֱ��researchers highlight the importance of long-term monitoring of insect abundance around the world.

Dicks, a Lecturer in Animal Ecology in the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology, said: “Most information about insects comes from a small number of countries in the northern hemisphere. There is very little information from large parts of the world such as Africa, South America and Asia, where land use change and agricultural expansion - key drivers of insect decline - are happening fast.”

She added: “What happens to insects matters a lot to humanity. These small six-legged creatures play central roles in the world’s ecosystems - as waste processors, pollinators, predators, and prey. Without them, humans - and all of nature - could be in a lot of trouble.”

Dr Andrew Terry, ZSL’s Director of Conservation said: “This report is clear evidence of the damage human activity is doing to the natural world. If nothing changes, populations will undoubtedly continue to fall, driving wildlife to extinction and threatening the integrity of the ecosystems on which we all depend. But we also know that conservation works and species can be brought back from the brink. With commitment, investment and expertise, these trends can be reversed.”

Stabilising and reversing the loss of nature caused by humans’ destruction of natural habitats will only be possible if bolder, more ambitious conservation efforts are embraced, and transformational changes made to the way we produce and consume food. Changes include making food production and trade more efficient and ecologically sustainable, reducing waste, and favouring healthier and more environmentally-friendly diets. Implementing these measures together, rather than in isolation, will allow the world to more rapidly alleviate pressures on wildlife habitats.

̽��ֱ��Living Planet Report 2020 launches less than a week before the 75th session of the United Nations General Assembly, when leaders are expected to review the progress made on the Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris Agreement and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Bringing together world leaders, businesses and civil society, the meeting will develop the post-2020 framework for action for global biodiversity.

Lambertini said: “With leaders gathering virtually for the UN General Assembly in a few days’ time, this research can help us secure a New Deal for Nature and People which will be key to the long-term survival of wildlife, plant and insect populations and the whole of nature, including humankind. A New Deal has never been needed more.”

̽��ֱ��Living Planet Report is WWF's flagship publication and is produced every two years as a comprehensive study of trends in global biodiversity and the health of the planet. This is the 13th edition.

Adapted from a press release by WWF.

Global populations of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish have declined by over two-thirds in less than half a century, due in large part to the same environmental destruction that is contributing to the emergence of zoonotic diseases like COVID-19, according to a World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) report released today.

What happens to insects matters a lot to humanity

Lynn Dicks

NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring

'Blue Marble' image of Earth

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Risk of Ebola outbreaks could be reduced by understanding how ecosystems influence human health

Anonymous — Tue, 15 Oct 2019 15:00:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��model could help policymakers to decide where to target vaccine deployment, or develop healthcare infrastructure, to reduce the risk of zoonotic disease outbreaks – illnesses that spread between animals and humans.

Analysis using the mathematical model, published in the journal Nature Communications, shows that several countries in Africa, including Nigeria, could be at risk of Ebola outbreaks both presently and in the future, despite having experienced no known cases to date.

“It is vital that we understand the complexities causing animal-borne diseases to spill-over into humans, to accurately predict outbreaks and help save lives,” said Dr David Redding at UCL Genetics, Evolution & Environment, first author of the study. “In our models, we’ve included more information about the animals that carry Ebola and, by doing so, we can better account for how changes in climate, land-use or human societies can affect human health.”

Designed by a team including researchers from UCL, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and Zoological Society of London (ZSL), the model captures the impact of climate, land use and human population factors on the risk of Ebola and predicts the known set of previous outbreaks with a high degree of accuracy, even in the absence of case data. ̽��ֱ��results show that Ebola outbreaks, resulting from spill-over events, are 1.6 times more likely in scenarios with increased warming and slower socioeconomic development.

Professor James Wood from Cambridge’s Department of Veterinary Medicine, who co-authored the study, said: “This work takes an unusually long-term approach to considering epidemic risk of Ebola, and identifies risks likely increasing across West as well as Central Africa. While there is always inherent uncertainty in specific predictions, the results suggest investment in primary health care across sub-Saharan Africa could have the most beneficial impact in reducing future risk.”

More than two thirds of all infectious diseases originate in animals, including Ebola, Lassa fever and West Nile virus. These diseases contribute to the global health and economic burden that disproportionately affects poor communities.

̽��ֱ��latest Ebola epidemic has claimed more than 2,100 lives since August 2018 and while there are signs it is in retreat, the risk of spread is still high according to a recent report by the UN.

̽��ֱ��World Bank estimates that the 2014 Ebola outbreak cost the three countries most affected many billions of dollars, due to infrastructure breakdown, mass migration, crop abandonment and a rise in endemic disease due to overrun healthcare systems, among other drivers.

̽��ֱ��team used a first principles approach of how humans interact with wildlife and how Ebola spreads within human populations to develop the predictive framework, which could also be adapted for other zoonotic diseases.

“Importantly, our model is flexible enough to allow us to predict Ebola outbreaks in alternative, simulated versions of the world. For example, we examine a set of plausible future environments and show stark differences in how Ebola responds to the best-case and worst-case scenarios of future climate change and poverty alleviation,” explained co-author Professor Kate Jones at UCL Genetics, Evolution & Environment and Institute of Zoology, ZSL.

̽��ֱ��study was funded by the Natural Environmental Research Council, Economic and Social Research Council, the Medical Research Council, the Royal Society and the Wellcome Trust.

Reference:
Redding, DW et al. 'Understanding the impact of environmental and socio-economic factors on emergence and epidemic potential of Ebola in Africa’, Nature Communications (2019), DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-12499-6.

Adapted from a press release by UCL.

̽��ֱ��next Ebola outbreak could be predicted using a new model that tracks how changes to ecosystems and human societies combine to affect the spread of the deadly infectious disease.

̽��ֱ��results suggest investment in primary health care across sub-Saharan Africa could have the most beneficial impact in reducing future Ebola risk.

James Wood

UN Photo/Martine Perret

Ebola treatment centre, Nzérékoré, Guinea

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Baboons watch neighbours for clues about food, but can end up in queues

fpjl2 — Wed, 20 Apr 2016 09:01:05 +0000

Latest research on social networks in wild baboon troops has revealed how the animals get information from each other on the whereabouts of food. However, once information reaches a high status baboon, subordinates often end up in a queue for scraps.

A new study, by researchers from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and the Zoological Society of London, shows how baboons monitor each other for changes in behaviour that indicate food has been found, such as hunching over to scoop it up.

This ‘socially learned’ information gets transmitted through proximity: those with more neighbours are more likely to spot when someone starts feeding. Once they do, baboons will head towards the food.

Information then starts to spread through the troop, as more baboons observe feeding behaviour or notice their neighbours moving in the direction of food. However, troop hierarchy ultimately kicks in – with the most dominant member in the vicinity, usually a male, wading in to claim the spoils.

At this point, surrounding baboons will often form what can appear to be a queue, to determine who gets to explore that patch of ground next.

These queues reflect the complex interactions within a baboon troop. ̽��ֱ��sequence of baboons in a queue depends on status – sometimes through birth-right – as well as social and familial relationships to the particular baboon occupying the food patch.

̽��ֱ��new research, published in the open access journal eLife, breaks down the transmission of social information through a baboon troop into three stages:

Acquiring information: observing behaviour that suggests food.
Applying information: exploring the food patch (even if no food is left).
Finally, exploiting information: actually getting to eat.

̽��ֱ��researchers used social networking models to show how being close enough to spot behaviour change is the only driver for acquiring knowledge.

When it comes to applying and exploiting social knowledge, however, the characteristics of individual baboons – whether its sex, status, boldness, or social ties in grooming networks – determine who gets to eat, or where they are in any queue that forms.

Baboon troops can be sizable, sometimes as many as 100 members, with the troops in the latest study numbering around 70. On average, less than 25% of a troop – around 10 individuals – acquired information of a food patch, with less than 5% of the troop actually exploiting it.

“Who actually gets to eat is only half the story,” says Dr Alecia Carter, from Cambridge’s Department of Zoology, who led the research.

“Just looking at the animals that capture the benefits of information, in this case food, doesn’t reflect the real pattern of how information transmits through groups. Many more animals acquire information, but are limited in their use of it for a variety of reasons.”

To conduct the study, researchers snuck handfuls of maize corn kernels, a high-energy baboon favourite (“like finding a stash of chocolate bars”) into the path of two foraging troops of wild chacma baboons in Tsaobis Nature Park, Namibia.

Once a troop member found the food, the researchers recorded the identities of baboons that spotted the animal eating, accessed the food patch, and got anything to eat.

Carter says that the best place for low-ranking baboons is often the peripheries, in the hopes of finding food and grabbing a few kernels before information spreads, and they are supplanted by the local dominant.

“ ̽��ֱ��more dominant a baboon is, the more spatially central in the troop they tend to be – as they can afford to be there. This provides more opportunities to gain information through the wider network,” says Carter.

Low-rankers that discover food will sometimes try to eat as stealthily or as quickly as they can, but, once a dominant has taken control of the food patch, a queue will often form. Grooming relationships to the feeding dominant can help a subordinate jump up a queue, although much of it is dictated by status.

For females, status is a birth-right that remains fixed throughout a baboon’s life. While human societies historically privilege the firstborn, in baboon troops maternal lineage is ranked by lastborn – with each new female baby replacing the last in terms of hierarchy.

Young males hold the same rank as their mother until they reach adolescence, usually around the age of six, and start asserting dominance through their bigger size, leading to shifts in status.

“It is relatively easy to collect dominance data, as baboons are constantly asserting dominance,” explains Carter. “Low-cost assertions of dominance, such as pushing an individual out of small patches of food, help to mitigate high-cost assertions, such as fights, and maintain the order.”

“However, baboons can mediate their status to a minor extent by having good grooming relationships, and low-ranking individuals have a slightly higher chance of applying and exploiting information if they are central in a grooming network. Over a lifetime of food opportunities, this may prove important for fitness.”

While baboons acquire information about food locations from watching others, they can also use social learning to see when that food is likely to be gone. Interestingly, the researchers found that males and females will often use this information in different ways.

“Baboons are highly vigilant, and constantly pay attention to what their neighbours are up to. When those in a food patch are sifting through dirt and clearly coming up empty-handed, most females will walk off, and won’t waste their time,” says Carter.

“Males on the other hand, particularly young males, are amazingly persistent, and will stay in a patch shifting sand around for a very long time in the hopes of finding a stray kernel.

“We hypothesise that, while males can afford to expend the energy, adult females are lactating or pregnant most of the time, so need to conserve their strength, and often end up using the information in a more practical way as a result.”

Baboons learn about food locations socially through monitoring the behaviour of those around them. While proximity to others is the key to acquiring information, research shows that accessing food depends on the complex hierarchies of a baboon troop, and those lower down the pecking order can end up queuing for leftovers.

̽��ֱ��more dominant a baboon is, the more spatially central in the troop they tend to be – as they can afford to be there

Alecia Carter

Baboon troop

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Biggest library of bat sounds compiled to track biodiversity

jeh98 — Thu, 14 Apr 2016 11:41:21 +0000

An international team led by scientists from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, ̽��ֱ�� College London (UCL), and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), developed the reference call library and a new way of classifying calls to accurately and quickly identify and differentiate bat species.

̽��ֱ��researchers say the method can be used to monitor biodiversity change and complete information on bat species distributions in remote and understudied regions in Mexico. It could also be expanded for use in other areas across the Neotropics, which incorporates South and Central America, and the Caribbean Islands and Florida.

It is the first time automatic classification for bat calls has been attempted for a large variety of species, most of them previously noted as hard to identify acoustically.

“Audio surveys are increasingly used to monitor biodiversity change, and bats are especially useful for this as they are an important indicator species, contributing significantly to ecosystems as pollinators, seed dispersers and suppressors of insect populations,” explains lead author Dr Veronica Zamora-Gutierrez, from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Conservation Research Institute and UCL.

“By tracking the sounds they use to explore their surroundings, we can characterise the bat communities in different regions in the long term and gauge the impact of rapid environmental change.”

“Before now it was tricky to do as many bat species have very similar calls and differ in how well they can be detected. We overcame this by using machine learning algorithms together with information about hierarchies to automatically identify different bat species.”

For the study, published today in Methods in Ecology and Evolution, the researchers ventured into some of the most dangerous areas of Mexico, primarily the northern deserts, to collect 4,685 calls from 1,378 individual bats from 59 of the over 130 species occurring in Mexico.

Most of the areas hadn’t been sampled before and the data collected, along with additional information from collaborators, provides calls for over half of the species and all of the families of bats in Mexico.

Co-author, Professor Kate Jones, UCL and ZSL, said: “We’ve shown it is possible to reliably and rapidly identify bats in mega-diverse areas, such as Mexico, and we hope this encourages uptake of this method to monitor biodiversity changes in other biodiversity hotspot areas such as South America.”

“Our ability to readily map ecological communities is imperative for understanding the impact of the Anthropocene and implementing effective conservation measures.”

̽��ֱ��team now plan on developing a citizen science monitoring programme for Mexican bats to collect further information on bat calls. They will also develop more robust tools for bat identification using the Bat Detective website which will allow them to refine the machine learning algorithms used by the software.

̽��ֱ��study also involved researchers from the IPN CIIDIR Durango (Mexico), Universidad Veracruzana (Mexico), Western ̽��ֱ�� (Canada), ̽��ֱ�� of Bristol, ̽��ֱ�� of Ulm (Germany), Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (Panama), Ernst-Moritz-Arndt ̽��ֱ�� (Germany), ̽��ֱ�� College Dublin and ̽��ֱ�� of Warwick. It was kindly funded by CONACYT, Cambridge Commonwealth European and International Trust, ̽��ֱ��Rufford Foundation, American Society of Mammalogists, Bat Conservation International, Idea Wild, ̽��ֱ��Whitmore Trust and Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

Adapted from a ̽��ֱ�� College London press release.

Inset image: ̽��ֱ��western yellow bat (Lasiurus xanthinus) is a species of vesper bat found in Mexico and the south-western United States (UCL/ZSL).

Researchers have compiled the largest known library of bat calls to identify and conserve rare species in Mexico – a country which is home to many of the world’s bats and has one of the highest rates of species extinction and habitat loss.

Bats are especially useful for monitoring biodiversity change as they are an important indicator species, contributing significantly to ecosystems

Veronica Zamora-Gutierrez

Noel Reynolds

Bat

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Baboons prefer to spend time with others of the same age, status and even personality

sc604 — Wed, 13 May 2015 08:06:32 +0000

New research shows that chacma baboons within a troop spend more of their time with baboons that have similar characteristics to themselves: associating with those of a similar age, dominance rank and even personality type such as boldness. This is known as homophily, or ‘love of the same’.

A team of researchers led by the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and international conservation charity the Zoological Society of London says that this may act as a barrier to the transfer of new social information to the wider troop, as previous research done by the team shows baboons of a certain age and personality type – the younger, bolder animals – are more likely to be information ‘generators’: those who solve new foraging problems.

Given that information generators spend much of their time in the company of similar baboons, researchers say there is a risk that acquired information may end up exclusively confined to other information generators, thus decreasing the likelihood of new knowledge being disseminated to the wider troop.

Research teams tracked the same two baboon troops from dawn until dusk across Namibia’s Tsaobis Nature Park over several months each year between 2009-2014 to observe patterns of behaviour. ̽��ֱ��study is the first to monitor baboon social network structures over such a timescale and is published today in the journal Royal Society Open Science.

“Within these big troop networks over time social preferences are generally dictated by age, rank, personality and so on,” said Dr Alecia Carter, from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology, first author of the study. “This happens in humans all the time; we hang out with people who have the same income, religion, education etc. Essentially, it’s the same in baboons.”

To test for the personality traits of ‘boldness’ – essentially an assertive curiosity – the researchers planted unfamiliar foods on the edge of paths commonly used by baboon troops. These stimuli included hard-boiled eggs and small bread rolls dyed red or green. ̽��ֱ��research team then measured the time spent on investigating the new foodstuff, and whether they ate it, to determine a scale of boldness for members of the baboon troops.

“Our analysis is the first to suggest that bolder and shyer baboons are more likely to associate with others that share this personality trait,” said Dr Guy Cowlishaw from the Zoological Society of London, senior author of the study. “Previous studies in other animals – from chimps to guppies – suggests that time spent in the company of those with similar personalities could promote cooperation among individuals.

“Why baboons should demonstrate homophily for boldness is unclear, but it could be a heritable trait, and the patterns we’re seeing reflect family associations.”

Perhaps surprisingly, says Carter, gender was not a particular obstacle to social interaction, with females preferring to groom males. This is, in part, due to the obvious sexual engagements for breeding, but also as a tactic on the part of females to curry favour with particular males for the sake of their offspring.

“Chacma baboon males will often commit infanticide, killing the babies of rivals. Female baboons try and get around this by being as promiscuous as possible to confuse the paternal identity – so males find it harder to tell if they are killing a rival’s offspring or their own,” added Dr Carter.

“They will also try and form bonds with particular males in the hope that they will protect their offspring and let the babies forage in good places with them – although males tend to be fairly lazy when it comes to this; it’s up to the babies to follow the males to good food.”

Latest research shows that, within large troops, baboons spend more time grooming those with similar dominance rank and boldness to themselves. Preferring such grooming partners may prevent new skills and knowledge being transmitted around the wider troop, say researchers.

This happens in humans all the time; we hang out with people who have the same income, religion, education etc. Essentially, it’s the same in baboons

Alecia Carter

Grooming

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New clue in the battle against Australian Hendra virus

bjb42 — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 16:13:00 +0000

A new study on African bats provides a vital clue for unravelling the mysteries in Australia’s battle with the deadly Hendra virus.

̽��ֱ��study focused on an isolated colony of straw-coloured fruit bats on islands off the west coast of central Africa. By capturing the bats and collecting blood samples, scientists discovered these animals have antibodies that can neutralise deadly viruses known in Australia and Asia.

̽��ֱ��paper is published today, 12 January, in the journal PLoS ONE, and is a collaboration of the Department of Veterinary Medicine at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, the Zoological Society of London and the CSIRO Australian Animal Health Laboratory.

Hendra virus in Australia and Nipah virus in Asia are carried by fruit bats and sporadically “spill over” into people with tragic consequences. ̽��ֱ��findings of the new study are significant as they yield valuable insights for our understanding of how these viruses persist in bat populations.

Cambridge PhD student Alison Peel explains, “Hendra and Nipah viruses cause fatal infections in humans, but we currently understand very little about how the viruses are transmitted from bats to other animals or people. To understand what the risk factors for these 'spill-overs' are, it is crucial to understand how viruses are maintained in bat populations. ̽��ֱ��ability to study these viruses within an isolated bat colony has given us new insight into these processes.”

It was previously believed that these viruses were maintained in large interconnected populations of bats, so that if the virus dies out in one colony, it would be reintroduced when bats from different colonies interact. ̽��ֱ��new study indicates that a closely related virus is able to persist in a very small and isolated population of bats. This is the first time this has been documented in a natural wild population, casting doubt on current theories.

Peel added, “Although Hendra and Nipah viruses are relatively new to science, it appears that bats have lived and evolved with them over a very long time. We hope that by gaining a better understanding of this relationship, we may then be able to understand why it is only within the last 20 years that spill-over to humans has occurred."

Researchers find that African bats have antibodies that neutralise a deadly virus.

̽��ֱ��ability to study these viruses within an isolated bat colony has given us new insight into these processes.

Alison Peel

Eidolon Helvum Flying

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