Comment by __MatrixMan__
2 days ago
I hope that the black footed ferret reintroduction efforts are successful (https://www.fws.gov/project/black-footed-ferret-recovery). There would be a lot less plague out there if so.
Lime disease has a similar relationship with predators that eat mice, so let's also keep an eye out for the owls and snakes.
Wonder if the same fleas that affect prarie dogs will also be at home on them?
I wonder also, although I kind of doubt it. As predators, they maintain relatively low population densities and are typically the first to go extinct when things get weird.
Selection would favor pathogens that instead specialize for hosts that are hard to get rid of. Mice, cockroaches, prairie dogs...
How would reintroducing the black footed ferret reduce the plague ? It's not stated in that link.
Reducing prairie dog concentrations, and most often killing the weaker slower ones, which are likely infected and showing the most symptoms.
Reduces spread and increases evolutionary pressure to increase resistance and possibly even become immune.
Possibly by reducing prairie dog numbers and concentration
BFFs eat prairie dogs.
They reduce the density of prairie dogs.
Wouldn’t the end up floating into the air?
1 reply →
>Lime disease Ah yes, good old Lime Disease, named after the town it was invented in, "Lime, Connecticut", Abraham Lime 1898, former student of Koch's lab in Germany.