| Dr. Jason K. Blackburn, director of the Spatial Epidemiology & Ecology Research Lab, and Assistant Professor of Geography and a team of scientists have published a new paper in the Journal of Wildlife Diseases on the confirmation of anthrax infection in bison from testing the remains of wolf kills in southwestern Montana. Dr. Blackburn has been working on the ecology of anthrax in southwestern Montana since 2008. This study confirmed that two bison killed by wolves had active bacterial infections from Bacillus anthracis, the pathogen that causes anthrax. Typically, prey meat would not be tested, but the team initiated a flexible surveillance strategy in 2010 that included testing animal meat from wolf kills. This work illustrates the need for dynamic disease surveillance in areas with enzootic anthrax and makes recommendations for including predator and prey! species sampling in disease monitoring. For more information on this study and the SEER Lab, visit www.seerlab.org. Wolf photo (C) Jason K. Blackburn, PhD.http://www.jwildlifedis.org/doi/abs/10.7589/2013-08-204 |