one health

Scientists Rule Out Human Herpesvirus in Endangered Gorillas With Help From Chewed Plants

A mountain gorilla walks in the forest of East Africa’s Virunga Volcanoes conservation area. It stops at a piece of wild celery, sits down, and begins to chew. It strips the vegetable’s fibrous threads through its teeth, extracting the fleshy, juicy bits, then drops the chewed stalk on the ground and ambles away. 

Latin America Program Director Dr. Marcy Uhart has co-authored a recent publication on southern right whales:

• Christiansen, F., Uhart, M.M., Bejder, L., Clapham, P., Ivashchenko, Y., Tormosov, D., Lewin, N. & Sironi, M. 2022. Foetal growth, birth size and energetic cost of gestation in southern right whales. Journal of Physiology. https://doi.org/10.1113/JP282351

Mange has decimated the population of wild vicuñas and guanacos in an Argentinian national park that was created to conserve them, according to a study from the Administration of National Parks in Argentina and the University of California, Davis.

The findings, published today in the journal PLOS ONE, suggest domestic llamas introduced to the site may have been the source of the outbreak. Cascading consequences for local predator and scavenger species are expected.

Our Orcas-Island based program SeaDoc Society is hiring a regional director. The deadline to apply is January 29, 2020.

For more information on the position: 

SeaDoc Society website