Do you have any examples of a species rendered extinct by a plague in nature?
How would we know? A pandemic should kill in a generation or two, leaving essentially no fossils (and if there were fossils, would we notice unless it was some sort of weird bone-distorting disease? or even then...), so the deep historical record would not help much. The human historical record is very sketchy since germ theory is so new and so many anciently-recorded species are of uncertain identification (think of all the plants and insects in the Bible we don’t know what they actually are), and when humans are competent to record data about wild diseases and plagues, it’s generally because they’re part of the problem: Tasmanian Devils are being killed off by a nasty communicable cancer (population cut by 70% since 1996, Wikipedia says), but maybe their vulnerability is just due to human-caused stress or something.
Do you have any examples of a species rendered extinct by a plague in nature?
Recent observations, not fossil record or ancient history. And extirpation of a connected population from its (substantial) range is an OK proxy.
My first thought, off the top of my head, is Dutch Elm Disease, which developed in Asia, where the trees grew tolerant of it, but then spread to other areas, where the trees had no resistance. Non-Asiatic elms aren’t extinct yet, but I think the two options are either: 1) Saved via human intervention, genetic modification, etc., or 2) The susceptible breeds will eventually go extinct as it spreads.
And extirpation of a connected population from its (substantial) range is an OK proxy.
I’m not a paleontologist, but don’t we see species suddenly vanish from their ranges all the time even excluding the mass extinction events? How do we know that some of these extirpations are not pandemics?
Well, the time period then is quite small. Moreover, we’re currently inadvertently killing so many species, that a handful being killed by disease could just get lost in the noise. I suspect there aren’t any, but it isn’t clear how to test that.
How would we know? A pandemic should kill in a generation or two, leaving essentially no fossils (and if there were fossils, would we notice unless it was some sort of weird bone-distorting disease? or even then...), so the deep historical record would not help much. The human historical record is very sketchy since germ theory is so new and so many anciently-recorded species are of uncertain identification (think of all the plants and insects in the Bible we don’t know what they actually are), and when humans are competent to record data about wild diseases and plagues, it’s generally because they’re part of the problem: Tasmanian Devils are being killed off by a nasty communicable cancer (population cut by 70% since 1996, Wikipedia says), but maybe their vulnerability is just due to human-caused stress or something.
Recent observations, not fossil record or ancient history. And extirpation of a connected population from its (substantial) range is an OK proxy.
My first thought, off the top of my head, is Dutch Elm Disease, which developed in Asia, where the trees grew tolerant of it, but then spread to other areas, where the trees had no resistance. Non-Asiatic elms aren’t extinct yet, but I think the two options are either: 1) Saved via human intervention, genetic modification, etc., or 2) The susceptible breeds will eventually go extinct as it spreads.
The American Chestnut is not completely extinct either, but has been mostly eradicated by chestnut blight.
I’m not a paleontologist, but don’t we see species suddenly vanish from their ranges all the time even excluding the mass extinction events? How do we know that some of these extirpations are not pandemics?
Well, the time period then is quite small. Moreover, we’re currently inadvertently killing so many species, that a handful being killed by disease could just get lost in the noise. I suspect there aren’t any, but it isn’t clear how to test that.