Wish I Could Make It...

The next ESA/SER meeting is right up my alley:

Drawing from a wide range of case studies that illustrate the potential effects of climate on disease dynamics, a series of presentations to be held at the joint meeting of the Ecological Society of America and the Society for Ecological Restoration will showcase what scientists are discovering about the links between climate and disease...

John Bruno (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) will review the trends for such coral diseases as White Syndrome and Caribbean Yellow Band Syndrome. Temperature anomalies, which are predicted to increase in most tropical oceans, appear to increase the severity of such disease outbreaks, which lead to loss of reef habitat.

Globally, amphibian populations have been on the decline and numerous factors appear to be at work in contributing to their downward trend. Karen Lips (Southern Illinois University Carbondale) will review the evidence of climate change triggering disease outbreaks such as chytridiomycosis. Untangling the mystery of the various possible threats to amphibians is confounding, particularly in high elevation tropical areas.

Native great gerbils in Central Asia are a carrier of the bacterium Yersinia pestis, the bacterium which causes bubonic plague. Nils Stenseth (University of Oslo, Norway) will review over 45 years of field data that show warmer springs and wetter summers increases the prevalence of Y. pestis in gerbils. Stenseth suggests that climatic change will render conditions more favorable for human plague, which is still reported regularly in Central Asia.

Exploring how climate may affect another disease of concern to people, Nicholas Ogden (Public Health Agency of Canada) will address Canada's concern about Lyme disease, as the tick vector Ixodes scapularis expands its range. The United States already suffered an epidemic of Lyme disease, which emerged in the late 1970s and peaked in 2002 when over 21,000 cases were reported. Canadian public health officials hope to avoid a similar epidemic by predicting the scope and likely direction of Lyme disease expansion.

I've written on Bruno's work on white syndrome here before, and chytridiomycosis in Central America after my trip to the AAAS meeting in February. I wish I had the time/money to get there and do a follow up on both. Anyone planning on attending?