Published: 15 Feb 2022 | Last Updated: 15 Feb 2022 18:45:31

RVC researcher, Associate Professor Julian Drewe, is part of a team whose research has shown that climate change may impact the fitness of individuals and populations by altering the prevalence of infectious disease outbreaks.  Their data showed that extreme temperatures amplifies the negative effects of tuberculosis (TB) in social mammals (wild meerkats in the Kalahari). They found synergistic climate–disease effects on demography which rapidly intensify climate-change impacts. The implications are wide, both for TB which affects many species around the world, and for chronic diseases more generally. 

This research has recently been published in Nature Climate Change. You can view the full-text access of the paper by using the following SharedIt link: https://rdcu.be/cGwUS

Higher temperature extremes exacerbate negative disease effects in a social mammal
Paniw, M; Duncan, C; Groenewood, F; Drewe, JA; Manser, M; Ozgul, A; Clutton-Brock, T
Nature Climate Change. 2022. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01284-x