Three years ago, 200,000 saiga antelope--2/3 of the population--suddenly died en masse. Scientists are now closer to working out why, and their answer is worrying.https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/01/why-did-two-thirds-of-this-weird-antelope-suddenly-drop-dead/550676/?utm_source=twb …
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Als antwoord op @edyong209
This is a very interesting study, but causality is far from proven IMO. A small edit: "Even very severe viral diseases like anthrax don’t do this" > anthrax is caused by a bacterium (B. anthracis), not a virus ;-).
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Als antwoord op @edyong209 @K_G_Andersen
That “like” should’ve been an “or”. Also I’m sympathetic to cases like this where you’re dealing with a weird one-off catastrophe. Causality is a pain, even in controlled lab settings.
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Als antwoord op @edyong209
Causality is definitely a pain to prove (esp in this case), but so important. The authors say "cause of death is confirmed as hemorrhagic septicemia caused by the bacterium Pasteurella multocida", but I really don't see that. We even know this is a common bacteria in Saigas.
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Als antwoord op @K_G_Andersen @edyong209
I think we do know that its widespread in saigas (though that's not in this paper, to be fair - there's another one coming with more detail), and we have confirmed it as COD as best we can - what other confirmation would convince you? The tricky bit is why.
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Als antwoord op @EJMilnerGulland @edyong209
You show disease A and bug B, and then hypothesize that B > A, but only when C (climate) is a factor. Problem is that there's no plausible mechanism for how B|C > A, and no experimental link either. So while it's an interesting hypothesis, this is not a proof.
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As alternative hypotheses it could simply be that B is always present, or A > systemic B whether C is present or not. Have you tried metagenomic sequencing to look for other putative pathogens? (NGS was mentioned, but no data presented that I could find).
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Als antwoord op @K_G_Andersen @edyong209
Unfortunately there are regulatory issues with exporting DNA from Kazakhstan, RIBSP in KZ has done basic sequencing (paper in review). Pasteurella does seem widely present species-wide (in healthy adults & calves), from our surveys to date.
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