😲 Pumas Ruled an Argentinean Park, Until a Disease Arrived

Wildlife epidemics are becoming more common. In 2015, a bacterial infection wiped out two-thirds of the world’s saiga, a big-nosed Asian antelope. An unknown epidemic killed songbirds across the eastern and midwestern United States last year. The fungus that causes white-nose syndrome is hammering North American bats. Contagious cancers are killing Tasmanian devils. In a few cases, the ripple effects of these diseases are clear. In 2013, a mystery illness disintegrated the starfish of America’s Western Seaboard: These unlikely predators are the coastal equivalent of pumas, and in their absence, their sea-urchin prey were free to devour offshore kelp forests. A deadly fungus that humans inadvertently carried around the world has ravaged the planet’s amphibians, wiping out 90 species and leaving more than 100 others close to extinction; the snakes that eat those amphibians have also dwindled.