...more recent posts
alex the parrot
Dog walking: good for you, good for your pet.
Not so good for birds, apparently.
Australian researchers have found that walking leashed dogs along woodland paths leads to a significant reduction in the number and diversity of birds in the area, at least over the short term.
Peter B. Banks and Jessica V. Bryant of the University of New South Wales surveyed birds along woodland trails near Sydney shortly after dogs were walked on them or after people walked alone. All kinds of dogs were involved, big and small, purebred and mutt. As a control, they also surveyed birds on trails that no one, human or canine, had recently walked on.
Dr. Banks said the study was an outgrowth of his interest in predator-prey interactions. “Here you have a predator that is being walked through the bush quite regularly,” he said.
The researchers chose trails in places where dogs were banned and in other areas where dog walking was common, expecting different results in each. “We thought that where there was regular dog walking birds would get used to it,” Dr. Banks said. “Well, they didn’t.”
Regardless of the type of area, dog walking led to a 35 percent reduction in the number of bird species and a 41 percent reduction in overall bird numbers, compared with the control. (People walking alone caused some disturbance, but less than half that caused by people with dogs.)
Lipkin set aside the bits and pieces of DNA from the bees and started sorting through what was left, searching for material found only in beehives infected by CCD. What they found, eventually, was a bee-killing virus first identified in Israel.
These findings have now been published online by the journal Science.
But both Pettis and Lipkin are quick to note that they have yet to prove conclusively that the Middle Eastern virus they found is the sole cause of CCD.
"Right now, we are claiming it is a marker in Colony Collapse Disorder," Pettis explains. "We have shown that it is present when colonies are collapsing, but we haven't shown cause and effect."