Oops - Turkey Releases Invasive Guinea Fowl To Eat Ticks, Except That The Birds Carry Them

[hatrack]

As Turkey raises and releases thousands of non-native helmeted guineafowl (Numida meleagris) to eat ticks that carry the deadly Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus, new research suggests guineafowl actually eat few ticks, carry the parasites on their feathers, and further spread the disease.

"It took me only three hours of literature search and quick scan of the abstracts of some 60 papers in the Web of Science to see that guineafowl hardly ate any ticks in their environment and in fact carried many more," Çağan Şekercioğlu, assistant professor of biology at the University of Utah, told mongabay.com.

In his new paper,,the third-most downloaded in the journal Trends in Parasitology, Şekercioğlu explains that the idea guineafowl eat Dermacentor reticulatus ticks and control the disease is based on evidence from a 1992 study suggesting that birds could control ticks that carry Lyme disease in the United States.

Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever is a tick-borne virus, which according to statistics compiled by Şekercioğlu has infected 6,392 people and killed 322. With cases of the disease dropping in 2011, some officials proclaimed the guineafowl program a success. However, wild ground-feeding birds serve as hosts for Hyalomma marginatum ticks, the most efficient and common vectors of Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, magnify the virus, and help to transmit the disease.

EDIT

http://news.mongabay.com/2013/0204-handley-turkey-invasive.html

[Scootaloo]

1. What a stupid scheme; hopefully someone just lost a job n/t

[kestrel91316]

2. Oops. Talk about unintended consequences. Here in the US the research and testing

that leads to the importation of a new species of teensy little parasitic wasp to fight some plant disease or pest is breathtaking in its scope and duration - decades.

Turkey is more like we were back in the 1800s - not so savvy as to the downside of ecosystem manipulation.

[happyslug]

3. So a native ladybug is almost gone due to the introduction of a foreign ladybug in PA

https://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/courses/icb344/abstracts/c9-lady-beetle.htm

The Native that is almost gone:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coccinella_novemnotata

More on the European invader:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coccinella_septempunctata

Asian Invader:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_lady_beetle

[eppur_se_muova]

4. Uh-oh -- We've been seeing a lot of yellowish ladybugs lately.

Hope they're not the invasive Asian species.

[Champion Jack]

5. Yeah, and NOTHING will eat them, not guineas, chickens or ducks