Bluetongue virus – A Transcontinental Disease

If you’ve read my previous posts, you might have noticed that I’ve previously mentioned bluetongue virus, and this post is solely dedicated to that particular arbovirus. Bluetongue is an excellent example of a disease that will likely benefit from climate change, increasing in both frequency and range. Part of the reason why the BTV-8 outbreakContinue reading “Bluetongue virus – A Transcontinental Disease”

Preventing The Next Pandemic

At the time of writing this, the total number of COVID-19 cases in the world stands are 201 million, with 4.27 million deaths. According to The Economist, the cost of the pandemic could amount to $10 trillion in forgone GDP over 2020-21. For reference, that’s enough money to buy 66 International Space Stations (at $150Continue reading “Preventing The Next Pandemic”

The Next Big One

As the world recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic, we cannot forget what happened. Our focus needs to fall on what the next pandemic could be and how and where it could occur. The World Health Organisation lists ten priority diseases that have epidemic potential, including: COVID-19 Crimean-Congo Haemorrhagic fever Ebola virus and Marburg virus LassaContinue reading “The Next Big One”

Disease in the UK – The Impact of Climate Change

Source: Baylis, M. (2017). Potential impact of climate change on emerging vector-borne and other infections in the UK. Environmental Health, 16(1), 45-51. You would have seen in my recent posts about the impacts of climate change on disease, however those have always concerned tropical regions. In the UK, we’ve always been relatively safe, due to our temperateContinue reading “Disease in the UK – The Impact of Climate Change”

Spotlight: Environmental variability supports chimpanzee behavioural diversity

Source: Kalan, A. K., Kulik, L., Arandjelovic, M., Boesch, C., Haas, F., Dieguez, P., … & Michael Fay, J. (2020). Environmental variability supports chimpanzee behavioural diversity. http://researchonline. ljmu. ac. uk/id/eprint/14322. This study identified that environmental variability had a more important effect on chimpanzee behavioural diversity, than climate or habitat stability. It suggests that the needContinue reading “Spotlight: Environmental variability supports chimpanzee behavioural diversity”

Effect of climate change on the Neotropics

Whereas my last posts have looked into the findings of a single paper, this post will include research from several. These will cover the effects of climate change (Korstjens & Hillyer, 2016; Ribeiro et al. 2020); including a deeper look into its’ effect on primate metapopulations (Wiederholt & Post 2010), and a case study lookingContinue reading “Effect of climate change on the Neotropics”

Primates and climate change: A review of current knowledge.

Source: Korstjens, A. H., & Hillyer, A. P. (2016). Primates and climate change: A review of current knowledge. An introduction to primate conservation, 175-192. Part One: Impacts As I wrote about in my last post about assessing vulnerability (Graham et al, 2016), we know that climate change will affect both temperature and precipitation. Whilst scientists areContinue reading “Primates and climate change: A review of current knowledge.”

Assessing primate exposure and vulnerability to climate change

Source: Graham, T. L., Matthews, H. D., & Turner, S. E. (2016). A global-scale evaluation of primate exposure and vulnerability to climate change. International Journal of Primatology, 37(2), 158-174. Climate change could have catastrophic impacts on animal populations, in fact, I’d go as far to say that it’s a slow-moving extinction event. In response to this, organisationsContinue reading “Assessing primate exposure and vulnerability to climate change”