ENWC201 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Amblyomma Americanum, Chronic Wasting Disease, Borrelia Burgdorferi
16 May 2018
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Lecture 11: Wildlife Disease
• Why are we concerned about wildlife disease?
o Extinction of a population
o Rec use of animals
• Wildlife diseases are connected to:
o Conservation of threatened and endangered species
o Recreational use of wildlife
o Public health/loss of life (pet and human)
o Agriculture (livestock)
• Basic Disease Vocabulary
o Disease- a disturbance to the normal function or structure of an organism
o Epizootic: a disease that appears at an unexpected rate, synonymous with
epidemic in humans
o Infectious: viruses, bacteria, fungi, parasites (internal and external)
▪ Pathogen- a disease causing agent
• Chronic wasting disease (CWD)
o Non infectious: toxins, physiological, nutritional, congenital, degenerative,
cancer
▪ Mercury poisoning
• Product of coal and other fossil fuel power generators
• Heavy metal toxin, methyl mercury
• Also emitted when items with mercury are incinerated
• Bio-accumulates
o Continuous put mercury into the environment
o Goes into organisms
• bio-magnifies
o increased concentration from one trophic level to the next
• Disease Dynamics
o Reservoir: any living or nonliving substance that may perpetuate a pathogen in
nature
o Reservoir host: a host that acts as a reservoir for the pathogen, but does not
suffer ill effects from the disease
o Host: an organism on or in which another organism lives
o Vector: an organism that carries pathogens from one host, or from a reservoir to
a host
• Disease and Agriculture
o Bird flu outbreak in Tennessee farm
o Brucellosis in cattle (Montana)
• Disease and endangered species
o Great lakes
▪ Avian botulism type E (high mortality rate)
• Quagga and zebra mussels
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