Climate change is causing their habitat to melt and apparently also threatens the health of polar bears. An American research team has come to the conclusion that animals are increasingly becoming infected with pathogens.
The Geological Survey research institute in Anchorage, Alaska, examined blood samples from polar bears for antibodies against six different pathogens. They were looking for the parasite Toxoplasma gondii or the canine distemper virus CDV.
Females are more affected
The samples from the polar bear population in the Chukchi Sea, a part of the Arctic Ocean between Alaska and Siberia, come from two time periods: from 1987 to 1994 and from 2008 to 2017. Compared to the earlier period, five of the six pathogens in the blood samples were became more common from 2008 onwards. For three of the pathogens, the number of infections had even more than doubled. On average, female polar bears were more affected than males.
According to scientists, global warming in the Arctic is happening almost four times faster than the global average. The polar bears’ habitat, the sea ice, is rapidly disappearing. At the same time, climate change provides better conditions for viruses, bacteria and parasites. With their research, the researchers wanted to find out to what extent the spread of such pathogens has changed.
Contact with germs does not necessarily mean illness
The results show that polar bears now come into contact with various pathogens more often than before. It is unclear to what extent this actually makes the animals ill. “All the pathogens we detected can cause disease in wildlife, but understanding their exact effects on wildlife is not easy,” the authors write in the journal “PLOS One”. However, a comparison with brown bear populations in Alaska suggests, among other things, that contact with pathogens has not yet caused significant damage to polar bear health.
Source: Krone
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