DNA clue to child brain tumours

Sparrows and other birds are vanishing from cities. One possible fallout could be increased spread of mosquito-borne diseases among humans, reports G.S. Mudur

In a police station housed in an old building with ageing wooden beams and thatched roof, close to one of Bangalore’s busiest open markets, Melally Giddegowda Venkatesha has discovered an urban oasis for sparrows.

In recent years, ornithologists have observed a sharp decline in house sparrow populations across Bangalore and other cities in India and Europe — from Mumbai, Hyderabad and Nashik to Brussels, London and Berlin.

After a year of counting sparrows at 16 sites in and around Bangalore, Venkatesha has identified the police station building near Krishna Raja Market as the area with the highest density of the birds in the metropolis. Using an identical counting method at each site, he’s observed 616 birds near K.R. Market, compared with a maximum of 280 birds in other central zones of the city.

“The K.R. Market is among the most polluted parts of the city. It has heavy traffic, large crowds, a busy vegetable and grain market,” said Venkatesha, a zoologist with Bangalore University. “But it is also among the best spots in this city to look for sparrows.”

His findings, presented earlier this year in the journal Current Science, have added fresh complexity to the mystery of the decline of sparrows reported by ornithologists and other bird watchers.

“It’s difficult to quantify the decline over time in India because of lack of research on the sparrow population,” said Prashant Mahajan, assistant director of the Important Birds Area division at the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS). “There is data from the UK, but the decline in India is evident only through observations.”

A study by the British Trust for Ornithology estimated that the sparrow population in London had declined by 71 per cent between 1994 and 2002. Edinburgh, Dublin, Glasgow, Hamburg and Berlin are other European cities that have reported a sparrow decline.

Scientists suspect the decline may be an early sign of predictions by Stanford University researchers that one in four birds is threatened. A study by a conservation biologist, Cagan Sekercioglu, at Stanford four years ago had predicted that about 10 per cent of all bird species are likely to disappear and another 15 per cent could be on the brink of extinction by the year 2100.

The loss could have negative impacts on forests and agriculture worldwide. “Important processes, particularly decomposition, pollination and seed dispersal, will likely decline as a result,” Sekercioglu had said after his study predicting the decline was published in December 2004 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Disease danger

A new study has indicated that the loss of birds may contribute to the spread of diseases among humans. Biologist Brian Allan, who is pursuing a doctoral course at Washington University, St Louis, in the US has found that high bird diversity appears to protect humans from exposure to the West Nile Virus which, like several other infections, is transmitted by mosquitoes.

Most birds are poor reservoirs — hosts — for the West Nile virus. So when mosquitoes bite birds they are unlikely to pick up the infection.

Where there are more birds to bite, mosquitoes will bite proportionately fewer people, partly reducing their chances of either picking up the infection or spreading it.

“Where many bird species exist, very few mosquitoes get infected, so humans are at low risk,” said Allan. “Where there are more bird species in your backyard, you have lower risk of contracting West Nile fever.”

Allan has analysed bird population density and cases of this viral infection in the US, and his research will be published in a forthcoming issue of the journal Oecologia.

Virologists, however, caution that some birds may be efficient carriers of viruses that can cause diseases in humans. Research suggests that crows, blue jays, sparrows and robins are among reservoirs of the West Nile virus.

The BNHS has now pitched a proposal to India’s environment and forests ministry seeking financial support for a nationwide project to search for sparrows and other common birds that are also harder to spot now than about a decade or two ago.

“The barbet and the brahmani kite are among other common birds of India whose populations also appear to have declined,” said Mahajan. “We need a programme to monitor such changes and understand what is causing them.”

Myriad blows

Scientists have previously proposed myriad theories about why sparrow populations have plummeted — air pollution, lack of nesting sites, reduced food availability, even electromagnetic radiation from mobile phone networks.

Researchers Alfonso Balimori from Spain and Orjan Hallberg from Sweden last year published data that appear to connect the decline of sparrows with electromagnetic radiation. They counted sparrows at 30 sites in the Spanish town of Valladolid each Sunday for four years and compared the density of sparrows to the streng

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I cannot find a link to this article online so I have typed it out. - Margaret

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Sunday Telegraph 2.11.2008

Bees face extinction without research cash, warn keepers

Patrick Sawer

THE NUMBER of honey bees wiped out by diseases that threaten their survival as a species reached almost two billion in the past year, according to experts.

They accused the government of failing to invest in the research needed to stem disease and parasites believed to have destroyed one in three bee colonies in the past year.

The beekeeper's Association [BBKA} has calculated that up to two billion bees have succumbed to sickness between November 2007 and April 2008 with a similar number expected to be killed by the end of this winter.

The association wants ministers to increase the £2000,000 currently spent on research into the bee health to £8 million over the next five years. It said that, unless the money is spent , a cure will never be found, leading to the extinction of Britain's bees.

Tim Lovett, president of the association said: "bees pollinate one third of all we eat. They provide more than 50 percent of pollination of wild plants on which birds and mammals depend. We must identify what is killing them, and that means research.

"The increased funding we are asking for is a drop in the ocean compared with the billions the Government has found for bank bailouts."

Beekeepers will bring their pleas to Gordon brown's doorstep on Wednesday, when they deliver a petition of 130,000 names to Downing Street, calling fro immediate Government action.

The BBKA carried out a nationwide survey of how many of Britain's 274,000 bee colonies, each with 20,000 bees, failed to survive last winter. It found that one in three had failed to make it through to the spring., with the loss of at least 1.8 billion bees.

The losses have been blamed on a phenomenon known as colony collapse  disorder which has also affected bee populations in America and Europe, along with a resistant form of the parasitic Varoa mite.

The Department fro Environment , Food and Rural Affairs said that it was developing  a bee-health strategy to tackle threats such as Varoa, but "demands for substantially increased funding in the current financial climate are unrealistic".




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