WestNileVirus-L: Neotropical Birds and WVN?!

From: David Duffy <dduffy_at_hawaii.edu>
Date: February 07 2003

<x-html><!x-stuff-for-pete base="" src="" id="0" charset=""><html>
 a letter to SCIENCE Feb 7, 2003 
 
Migratory Birds and the Spread of West Nile 
We read with substantial apprehension the News Focus article on the
spread 
of West Nile Virus (WNV) across the United States and its concomitant
 
decimation of bird populations ("West Nile's surprisingly swift
continental 
sweep," M. Enserink, 20 Sept., p. 1988; and sidebar "Bird
advocates fear 
that West Nile virus could silence the spring," D. Malakoff, p.
1989). Many 
of the survivors among these populations are very likely to spread WNV
 
throughout the Neotropics in this northern winter, if they have not
already 
done so during the last several winters. It is particularly ominous that
our 
observations of scores of species of small northern migrants (e.g.,
warblers 
and thrushes) this January in the Area de Conservacion Guanacaste in
 
northwestern Costa Rica (1) suggest that there is a precipituous decline
in 
their abundance compared with previous years. Parallel observations from
 
other neotropical continental areas would be opportune, as well as from
the 
Caribbean, as mentioned in the sidebar by Malakoff. This apparent decline
in 
Costa Rica could well be due to fewer migrants arriving, virus-based
death 
in transit or on the wintering grounds, or even disproportionally harsh
 
predation by resident predators accustomed to preying on abundant
migrants. 
Our ongoing inventory of the internal parasites of these migrants and
their 
sympatric residents (2) hopefully will indicate whether WNV has arrived
as 
we expect and is spreading [however, there are no recorded cases of WNV
in 
Costa Rica at this time (3)], and whether the apparent severe reduction
in 
northern migrants is indeed a persistent phenomenon. If this is the case,
 
the impact of such a multispecies epidemic on these species-rich and
 
interaction-rich tropical communities will be another dramatic and sad
 
example of the way in which unanticipated consequences of human activity
 
have harmed the wildland tropics. 
Douglas Causey, 
Museum of Comparative Zoology, 
Harvard University, 
26 Oxford Street, 
Cambridge, MA 02138, 
USA. 
Jeremiah Trimble, 
Museum of Comparative Zoology, 
Harvard University, 
26 Oxford Street, 
Cambridge, MA 02138, 
USA. 
Winnie Hallwachs, 
Department of Biology, 
University of Pennsylvania, 
415 South University Avenue, 
Philadelphia, PA 19104, 
USA. 
Daniel Brooks, 
Department of Zoology, 
University of Toronto, 
25 Harbord Street, 
Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G5, 
Canada. 
Daniel Janzen* 
Department of Biology, 
University of Pennsylvania, 
415 South University Avenue, 
Philadelphia, PA 19104, 
USA. 
*To whom correspondence should be addressed. 
E-mail: djanzen@sas.upenn.edu 
References and Notes 
See
<a href="http://www.acguanacaste.ac.cr/" eudora="autourl">www.acguanacaste.ac.cr</a>.
 
See
<a href="http://brooksweb.zoo.utoronto.ca/" eudora="autourl">http://brooksweb.zoo.utoronto.ca</a>.
R. Saenz, Costa Rican Minister of Health, personal communication.
 
 
<x-sigsep></x-sigsep>
David Cameron Duffy 
Professor of Botany and Unit Leader 
Pacific Cooperative Studies Unit (PCSU) 
(PCSU is a cooperative projective of the 
U.S. Geological Survey, National Park 
Service and University of Hawaii) 
3190 Maile Way  St. John 410 
Honolulu, HI  96822-2279 
(808) 956-8218 phone 
(808) 973-2936  fax   / (808) 956-3923 (backup fax) 
email address: dduffy@hawaii.edu 
</html>

</x-html>
Received on Fri Feb 07 13:52:25 2003