Subject: Re: House Finch conjunctivitis
Date: Dec 14 11:04:36 1995
From: Dennis Paulson - dpaulson at ups.edu


> Tuesday's New York Times (12/12/95) had a story in the its Science
>Times section on the conjunctivitis epidemic that is killing House Finches.
>The diesease has spreadly rapidly from the Northeast to the South and
>Midwest.
> The disease is not affecting other common feeder birds. Kollias
>inoculated the bacteria directly into the eye membrane of other
>passerines and the birds developed netiher lesions nor anitbodies. He
>stated, "This is quite unusual. My hypotehsis is that there's something
>really different about house finches that make them sisceptible tothis
>disease. Their lack of genetic diversity is a strongpossibility, since
>the founder population was so small.
>dale goble

But House Finches out here get something that, because of the obvious
symptoms, *seems* to be the same disease, and they presumably got here by
natural dispersal and would presumably have a more diverse genome. I
wonder if this happens to them in California.

Dennis Paulson, Director phone: (206) 756-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History fax: (206) 756-3352
University of Puget Sound e-mail: dpaulson at ups.edu
Tacoma, WA 98416