Article #14 1/23/13
Duke University. "Parasites of Madagascar's lemurs expanding with climate change."ScienceDaily, 23 Jan. 2013. Web. 23 Jan. 2013.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130123165038.htm
Topic: Animals
This article is about how parasites in Madagascar are expected to expand throughout the country by the year 2080. A team of researchers from Duke University created maps that showed the predictions of how parasites will be distributed in the future. They used the maps to figure out where lemurs and humans might be at most risk for transmitting diseases. Lemurs are originally from Madagascar, an island off the coast of Africa and there are several things that are threatening it's survival. One is climate change, the temperatures in Madagascar are predicted to rise from 1.1 to 2.6 degrees celsius by year 2080. Rainfall, drought and cyclone patterns are also factors that play into the Lemurs' fate. The research team from Duke focused on 6 species of mites, ticks and intestinal worms that were most commonly known to infect lemurs. The researchers compared their maps of the present day distribution of parasites to their future map and found that lemur parasite could expand by as much as 60%. An example is whipworms which are currently mostly located in Madagascar's northeast and western coasts, but in the future they could spread to the southeastern coasts too.
I thought it was interesting that the researchers were able to predict what the climate might look like in about 70 years from now. It's scary to think that those parasites could spread to different parts of Madagascar because once they've done that they can also spread to other countries even the U.S. I hope this research will help them to come up with ways to try to contain the parasites from spreading.
Topic: Animals
This article is about how parasites in Madagascar are expected to expand throughout the country by the year 2080. A team of researchers from Duke University created maps that showed the predictions of how parasites will be distributed in the future. They used the maps to figure out where lemurs and humans might be at most risk for transmitting diseases. Lemurs are originally from Madagascar, an island off the coast of Africa and there are several things that are threatening it's survival. One is climate change, the temperatures in Madagascar are predicted to rise from 1.1 to 2.6 degrees celsius by year 2080. Rainfall, drought and cyclone patterns are also factors that play into the Lemurs' fate. The research team from Duke focused on 6 species of mites, ticks and intestinal worms that were most commonly known to infect lemurs. The researchers compared their maps of the present day distribution of parasites to their future map and found that lemur parasite could expand by as much as 60%. An example is whipworms which are currently mostly located in Madagascar's northeast and western coasts, but in the future they could spread to the southeastern coasts too.
I thought it was interesting that the researchers were able to predict what the climate might look like in about 70 years from now. It's scary to think that those parasites could spread to different parts of Madagascar because once they've done that they can also spread to other countries even the U.S. I hope this research will help them to come up with ways to try to contain the parasites from spreading.