Anthrax Baits the Hook, Reels in Zebras

posted by azrael on Wednesday October 01 2014, @02:45PM

from the food-to-die-for dept.

ScienceMag is running a story that reveals some of the survival and propagation mechanisms of the Anthrax Bacillus in the wild. It turns out the bacterium has a green thumb.

In northwestern Namibia's Etosha National Park, the carcasses of animals that have died of anthrax fertilize patches of grass, making them particularly lush, and attractive to other animals. Of course animals that died from other causes fertilize grass too.

Wendy Turner, a disease and wildlife ecologist at the University of Oslo, noticed that the much greener grass near old Zebra carcasses seemed to attract animals, predominantly Zebras. Since Zebras seem particularly prone to death by Anthrax, she decided to study the effect of the pathogen on vegetation.

In a series of experiments, she added B. anthracis spores to the soil of native grass plantings and showed that the seeds were 50% more likely to germinate than controls. This work suggested a symbiotic relationship between savanna grasses and Anthrax transmission.

She headed back to Etosha, and staked out 26 sites where Zebra's had died. 13 of them died of Anthrax, and 13 died of other causes. She rigged each site with motion sensing cameras and waited. Meanwhile, sites were tested annually for the presence of anthrax on vegetation and in the soil.

Three years, and 1.2 million pictures later she had the answer.

Careful analysis showed animals were as likely to visit the anthrax-laden sites as the control sites. But they were four times more likely to graze at the anthrax sites, exposing themselves to the deadly pathogen. The strongest preference for munching on infected grass was observed in zebras, which also have the highest incidence of anthrax infection, followed by wildebeests and springboks.

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