Epidemiology Outbreaks of Hendra virus have been recorded across Queensland and New South Wales. Since its first emergence in 1994, there have been 49 recorded outbreaks of Hendra, all involving infection of horses. As a result of these events, over 80 horses have died or been euthanased (AVA, 2014). 7 human cases of infection have occurred involving individuals in close contact with infected horses, with 4 of these individuals dying, giving a fatality rate of 57% (DAFF, 2013). Fruit bats (flying
Economical and Environmental Impact of Grey-headed Flying-Fox (Pteropus Poliocephalus) A keystone species is an organism that has a critical effect on maintaining the structure of an ecosystem. Keystone species have a low functional redundancy and if extinct, would significantly alter the ecology, negatively impacting the range of species that inhabit the environment. The report will discuss the application and limitation of science as a human endeavor, with consideration to the role that humans
This is even truer in flying foxes, which have extensive morphological overlap between species. This makes it difficult to identify both species and subspecies based on morphology, especially when analyzing the bats when roosting through a scope. Pteropus hypomelanus (Figure 1) and Acerodon jubatus (Figure 2) would be extremely difficult to identify based solely on the aforementioned morphological characteristics. For accurate speciation, identification would have to occur through
its sister viruses the Nipah Virus and Cedar virus.[7, 9] HeV has the capability of causing fatal diseases in several animal species including humans.[1] The primary host of the Hendra virus was identified as the flying fox species from the genus Pteropus[1,2,3] that resides and migrates through Northeastern Australia[8] or more specifically, the East coast of Australia to Melbourne and west across Northern Australia to Darwin[7]. This extremely pathogenic zoonotic virus is now understood to travel