FROM: NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
Born during a drought: Bad news for baboons
Findings have implications for human health
The saying "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" may not hold up to scientific scrutiny.
After the plains of southern Kenya experienced a severe drought in 2009 that took a terrible toll on wildlife, researchers looked at how 50 wild baboons coped with the drought, and whether the conditions they faced in infancy played a role.
The semi-arid savanna of southern Kenya usually receives an average of 14 inches of rain a year--akin to much of Nebraska or Kansas--but in 2009 it fell to five inches, less than the Mojave Desert.
The year before wasn't much better: rainfall in 2008 dropped to half normal levels.
Grasslands withered
The grasslands the animals depend on for food dried up and watering holes disappeared, leaving many animals starving or weak from hunger.
"We lost 98 percent of the wildebeest population, 75 percent of the zebra population and 30 percent of the elephant population," said Susan Alberts, a biologist at Duke University. "It was impossible to go anywhere without smelling death."
Most baboons made it, but the drought left them underweight and many females stopped ovulating.
In a forthcoming paper in the journal American Naturalist, the researchers compared two groups of females--one group born during low rainfall years, the other born during normal rainfall years.
Born in a drought
All females in the study were adults by time of the 2009 drought, but those born in lean times fared worse in 2009 than those born in times of plenty, the researchers found.
"This study demonstrates lifetime fertility reductions for baboons born during stressful conditions or to low-ranking mothers," said George Gilchrist, program director in the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Division of Environmental Biology, which funded the research along with NSF's Divisions of Integrative Organismal Systems and Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences.
"These 'disadvantaged' early life experiences are linked with less resilience to stressful conditions experienced as adults."
During the 2009 drought, baboons born during low rainfall years were 60 percent less likely to become pregnant, whereas pregnancy rates dipped by only 10 percent for females born during normal rainfall years.
Drought babies born to higher-status mothers were less affected by the 2009 event.
"It might be that baboons born to higher-ranked moms have better access to food, or suffer lower levels of social stress," Alberts said.
Implications for human health
The findings also help explain why people who are malnourished in early childhood go on to have higher rates of obesity, diabetes and heart disease as adults.
Some researchers argue that human babies conceived or born in lean times are programmed for food shortages later in life.
They develop a "thrifty metabolism," aimed at storing fat and conserving energy in order to survive starvation.
Things go awry, the thinking goes, only when the environments they experienced as infants and as adults don't match, such as when a child conceived in famine grows up and eats an excess of cheeseburgers, said paper co-author Amanda Lea, a biologist at Duke.
But the baboon fertility study lends support to another idea, namely that kids who don't get enough to eat during their first year of life are simply less resilient as adults than their counterparts.
"The data suggest that early adversity carries lifelong costs," said co-author Jenny Tung, a biologist at Duke.
"It's bad to be born in bad times, but with the right social or economic environment, that can be mitigated," Alberts added.
Jeanne Altmann of Princeton University is also a co-author of the paper.
In addition to NSF, the National Institute on Aging in Bethesda, Md.; Duke University; Princeton University; and the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research supported the research.
-- Cheryl Dybas, NSF
-- Robin Ann Smith, Duke University
Investigators
Jenny Tung
Susan Alberts
Related Institutions/Organizations
Duke University
Showing posts with label HUMAN HEALTH. Show all posts
Showing posts with label HUMAN HEALTH. Show all posts
Sunday, April 5, 2015
Sunday, July 7, 2013
ANIMAL-TO-HUMAN INFECTIOUS DISEASE AT ANNUAL CONFERENCE
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| FROM: CDC. This is a male Ixodes ricinus tick (smaller) shown copulating with a female tick (larger). I. ricinus, the "castor bean" tick, so called because of its resemblance to the castor bean, is a vector for the B. burgdorferi spirochete, the cause of Lyme disease, and is commonly found on farm animals, and deer who are the natural host. Credit: Centers For Disease Control and Prevention/Wikimedia |
FROM: THE NATONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
Interplay of Ecology, Infectious Disease, Wildlife and Human Health Featured at Annual Conference
West Nile virus, Lyme disease and hantavirus. All are infectious diseases spreading in animals and in people. Is human interaction with the environment somehow responsible for the increase in these diseases?
The ecology and evolution of infectious diseases will be highlighted at two symposia at the Ecological Society of America's annual meeting, held from Aug. 5-9 in Minneapolis, Minn.
One symposium will address human influences on viral and bacterial diseases through alteration of landscapes and ecological processes.
Another will focus on the emerging field of eco-epidemiology, which seeks to integrate biomedical and ecological research approaches to addressing human health threats.
Much of the research presented is funded by the joint National Science Foundation- (NSF) National Institutes of Health Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases (EEID) Program.
"These sessions show that basic research is critical for managing disease threats," said Sam Scheiner, NSF EEID program director. "They also showcase the need to link scientists with public health professionals."
The first symposium, on Monday, Aug. 5, will take a deeper look at the connections between human activities and infectious diseases.
Though we often think of diseases as simply being "out there" in the environment, human actions--such as feeding birds--can influence the abundance, diversity and distribution of wildlife species and thus, infectious diseases.
"New human settlements, the spread of agriculture and the increasing proximity of people, their pets and livestock to wild animals increase the probability of disease outbreaks," said session organizer Courtney Coon of the University of South Florida.
"We're interested in learning more about how urban and other environments that humans dramatically change affect the susceptibility and transmission potential of animals that are hosts or vectors of disease."
What are the key determinants of spillover of wildlife diseases to domestic animals and humans?
Why is the prevalence of pathogens in wildlife in urban areas often altered by counterparts in less developed environments?
Speakers will address these and other questions.
The second symposium, on Tuesday, Aug. 6, will continue the theme of infectious diseases, but with an eye toward integrating biomedical and ecological approaches into the investigation and control of emerging diseases.
"Environmental processes and human health are linked, and we'd like to chart a future in which ecologists and epidemiologists more routinely work in tandem to address health problems," said symposium organizer Jory Brinkerhoff of the University of Richmond.
Scientists studying human diseases may overlook possible ecological factors.
For example, most Lyme disease cases in the eastern United States happen in the North even though the black-legged tick, which transmits the bacterium, is found throughout the Eastern states.
Human life histories and interactions with the environment, researchers say, are critically important to the success of managing a mosquito-borne virus called dengue fever.
"Disease ecologists and epidemiologists address some of the same kinds of questions, yet operate largely in isolation of one another," said Brinkerhoff.
"We're bringing them together to share their approaches and study designs, and to strengthen our ability to address public health issues."
Disease Ecology in Human-Altered Landscapes: Monday, Aug. 5, 2013, 1:30 p.m.-5 p.m., 205AB, Minneapolis Convention Center.
Organizer/Moderator: Courtney Coon, University of South Florida
Co-Organizer: James Adelman, Virginia Tech
Speakers:
Matthew Ferrari, Penn State University
Marm Kilpatrick, University of California, Santa Cruz
Raina Plowright, Penn State University
Sonia Altizer, University of Georgia
Becki Lawson, Zoological Society of London
Eco-Epidemiology: A Multi-Disciplinary Approach to Addressing Public Health Problems: Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2013, 1:30 p.m.-5 p.m., 205AB Minneapolis Convention Center.
Organizer/Moderator: Jory Brinkerhoff, University of Richmond
Co-Organizer: Maria Diuk-Wasser, Yale School of Public Health
Speakers:
Daniel Salkeld, Colorado State University
Mark Wilson, University of Michigan
James Holland Jones, Stanford University
Harish Padmanabha, National Center for Socio-Environmental Synthesis
Jean Tsao, Michigan State University
-NSF-
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