Credit: Andrew Walmsley
Tourists could be spreading the virus causing COVID-19 to wild mountain gorillas by taking selfies with the animals without following precautions. Researchers from Oxford Brookes University examined nearly 1,000 Instagram posts and found most gorilla trekking tourists were close enough to the animals, without face masks on, to make transmission of viruses and diseases possible.
Examining the photos from people visiting mountain gorillas in East Africa, lead author and Oxford Brookes University Primate Conservation alumnus Gaspard Van Hamme said: The risk of disease transmission between visitors and gorillas is very concerning. It is vital that we strengthen and enforce tour regulations to ensure gorilla trekking practices do not further threaten these already imperiled great apes .
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IMAGE: Desexing cats before 4 months can close the pregnancy gap and reduce the number of unwanted kittens. view more
Credit: City University of Hong Kong
The global problem of unowned domestic cats, driven by the cats phenomenal reproductive success, carries significant economic, animal welfare and biodiversity costs. Big-data research led by an expert on veterinary medicine and infectious diseases at
City University of Hong Kong (CityU) has found that although more than 80% of cats in Australia were desexed, only a fraction have had surgery before reaching puberty, thus creating a pregnancy gap . To close this gap and prevent unwanted litters, it is recommended that the age of desexing is before four months.
Walls and fences designed to secure national borders could make it difficult for almost 700 mammal species to adapt to climate change, according to new research.
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IMAGE: New research can help ecosystem managers identify species vulnerabilities and prevent populations from becoming at risk, like the endangered Mexican gray wolf. view more
Credit: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
More than 3,000 animal species in the world today are considered endangered, with hundreds more categorized as vulnerable. Currently, ecologists don t have reliable tools to predict when a species may become at risk.
A new paper published in
Nature Ecology and Evolution, Management implications of long transients in ecological systems, focuses on the transient nature of species and ecosystem stability and illustrates how management practices can be adjusted to better prepare for possible system flips. Some helpful modeling approaches are also offered, including one tool that may help identify potentially endangered populations.