Infectious Disease Specialists by Edward Willett

Author:Edward Willett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Enslow Publishing, LLC

Jonathan Runstadler spends much of his time in the field herding and swabbing birds. He tests the swab samples he collects for viruses— including avian flu.

Sedinger’s team members collected data on the birds’ ages and molt status, and put metal bands on their legs so individual birds could be identified if they were captured another time. Runstadler and his colleagues collected their samples at the same time.

Another major site for Runstadler’s team’s work was the Alaskan interior, not far from Fairbanks. There, with the Alaskan Department of Fish and Game, they banded and captured birds, taking samples along the way.

A third major sampling site was within the city of Fairbanks itself, where the now-closed Alaska Bird Observatory did a lot of sampling of songbirds, which they captured using mist nets. (A mist net is a fine-meshed net, similar to a volleyball net, that is invisible to the birds as they fly through the trees.)

In 2015 Runstadler’s team is working on a project examining the virus in gull populations in South Central Alaska around the city of Cordova.

“Recently, we’ve seen viruses related to H5N1 show up in North America, and so have restarted some additional sampling in Alaska to see if those strains are circulating more widely than we thought. We’ve also started other projects, particularly in New England, where we have begun a new, but related, project to examine how influenza virus is affecting the growing marine mammal populations in New England. I spent several days this past January restraining seal pups for sampling in frigid weather on Cape Cod. It was cold, hard work, but worth it to work on the incredible animals and even more so to work with a great and diverse group of people from federal agencies (like National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Fish and Wildlife Service, and National Parks) as well as volunteers from other research groups and individuals (New England Aquarium, Mystic Aquarium, Stranding network groups, etc.). We camped in an old lighthouse at the Monomoy Refuge in Chatham, huddled around propane heaters, but glad to be there.”

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