Birdfeeders Evolution of a Disease
Ambience: Birds
Pinkeye is a disease that can infect birds, particularly House Finches. I’m Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet. Bird feeders are contributing to the spread of this disease and possibly to its evolution.
Hawley: The disease doesn’t directly kill the birds, but what happens is the birds can’t see very well in the wild. This means are more likely to be taken by predator, or they can’t find food as well.
Biologist Dana Hawley.
Hawley: Our goal is to use House Finches as a model for other species that are less common and harder to study, because they really help us understand what behaviors do put wildlife at risk for disease spread, and what are humans doing that might be contributing to that.
The disease is similar to but from the Conjunctivitis that humans can get. So you’re not likely to contract Pink Eye from House Finches.
One thing we’re very interested in is whether bird feeders might be contributing to the evolution of this bacteria. We’ve been seeing that since this bacteria first occurred in house finches – which was about 20 years ago, it’s been getting more and more what we call virulent – or harmful, to house finches.
So it causes worse and worse pinkeye with each passing year and we’re investigating whether bird feeders might be contributing to that. And the reason that bird feeders might be contributing to the evolution of more harmful bacteria in this case, is that bird feeders make it easier for the pathogen to transmit, and this means there are fewer costs to the bacteria if they make birds more and more sick. So this may allow the bacteria to cause the birds to be more sick than it would otherwise. If the bacteria is able to spread better by making its host more sick than it will certainly evolve do that.
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