Join our lab! The Disease Ecology Lab at the USYD is seeking a highly motivated PhD candidate to explore drivers of infectious diseases at the wildlife-livestock interface 🌐 www.sydney.edu.au/scholarships... #PhD #Scholarship #DiseaseEcology #Epidemiology #WildlifeHealth #OneHealth #USYD

Urban possums in Melbourne, Victoria, have among the highest PFAS levels previously documented in terrestrial mammals anywhere in the world. Congratulations Ellis Mackay on your first paper! doi.org/10.1016/j.sc...

🎓 Graduate opportunity! The University of Melbourne’s School of BioSciences is seeking MSc students for a funded One Health-inspired project on how the gut microbiome can boost conservation success in Australian mammals. Contact Dr. Ashley Dungan: [email protected]

🧪Great work by Jacinta Colvin and team from RMIT and our partners at Phillip Island Nature Park.

🧪🦇 Congratulations, @alangguth.bsky.social for publishing the first of her PhD papers. More to come!

Excellent work by our fabulous final year DVM student Bridget Graffeo - and the MVS Parasitology team around Prof Abdul Jabbar.

Vote for your favourite Australian Bird of the Year! First round of voting closes tonight. A great opportunity to learn more about some of Australia's amazing avifauna. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Congratulations to Dr Anna Langguth, winner of the Student Award at this year‘s WDA-A conference for her presentation on zymosan challenge trials in eastern bent-wing bats. @alangguth.bsky.social #wdaa2025

Congratulations to Dr Alison Peel, winner of this year‘s prestigious WDA-A Barry L Munday Award for her extraordinary and extensive contributions to the field of wildlife health. @alibat.bsky.social #wdaa2025

We in WDA-A are deeply saddened to hear of Jane Goodall’s passing earlier today. Our thoughts and condolences go out to her family and friends. Her legacy in wildlife conservation, empathetic science, and inspiring generations will forever ripple across the world.

My student Anna presenting some of her PhD work at this year‘s Wildlife Disease Association Australasian meeting. Always a great bunch of people passionate about wildlife health to hang out with.

Brett Gartrell speaking about off-target anticoagulant toxicity in Tuatara and short-tailed bats in NZ

Julien Grosmaire @WDAA2025 speaking about methods for koala monitoring including different tag and collar designs.

The 2025 WDAA is officially underway! Some fantastic talks by Chris Daniels from Green Adelaide, David Paton from BioR and Claire Hartvigsen-Power from Marna Banggara telling us about biodiversity needs and projects in the Adelaide region and beyond.

Ha ha, today definitely #9

This work underlines the importance of doctors communicating effectively and evidence based with their patients.

Keep an eye on these WDAA member spotlights. Showcasing the breadth and depth of expertise in wildlife health in Australasia!

A vaccine against chlamydia in koalas will be rolled out. This is possible through exciting research led by Prof Peter Timms and Sam Phillips at University of Sunshine Coast. www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09...

My student Anna Langguth presenting her work on microbat immunology at the International Bat Conference in Cairns

And Wildlife Health Starter Pack: go.bsky.app/6T9kYR2

Re-sharing the links to my wildlife health list (bsky.app/profile/did:...)

🧪Congratulations, Jacinta Colvin, on an important publication showing some of the impacts of plastic ingestion in short-tailed shearwater fledglings. An decline in body condition since 2018 and an increase in plastic part size poses a potential threat to this species. doi.org/10.1007/s113...

Join us at the Wildlife Disease Association Australasian Section conference in beautiful South Australia, from the 28 Sept - 3 Oct this year. www.wda-a.org/upcoming-wda.... Registrations are now open at wdaa2025.exordo.com/login.

🧪 Fantastic work, including Melbourne Uni (Doherty Institute)'s Michelle Wille, documenting the devastating impacts of HPAI H5 strains in wildlife. Australia is not affected yet - but with the virus now in sub-Antarctic islands, that may not be the case for much longer.

🧪 White nose syndrome in North American bats appears to have been introduced from a cave system in the Ukraine back in 2006. Fantastic new research shows that European bats are affected by two separate clads of the fungus, but only one clade has (so far) been introduced to N-America: rdcu.be/epN7x

🧪 Great work by my One Health Research Group colleagues showing that some frog species manage to persist in the face of the catastrophic amphibian disease chytridiomycosis by breeding earlier and more efficiently. www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

In honor of International Bat Appreciation Day, please enjoy this blog post from the IUCN celebrating the critical contributions of bats 🖤 bit.ly/3EzRIMv

🧪Eastern barred bandicoots at Phillip Island, Australia, become infected with Genotype II and II-like Toxoplasma gondii, an introduced parasite of cats. An example of the impacts of cats on an otherwise successful conservation program. Well done Tharaka. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

An exciting opportunity to join Wildlife Health Australia for a 12 month contract: www.ethicaljobs.com.au/members/WHA/...

Australian bats can carry a rabies type virus, but if you don’t touch them, you’re safe. A great piece from some of our top bat health researchers.

Please consider contributing and/or sharing this wildlife research crowdsourcing project with your contacts. syndrome.https://experiment.com/projects/do-australian-bats-have-what-it-takes-to-survive-the-deadly-white-nose-syndrome

For anyone interested, I've curated both a Wildlife Health list (bsky.app/profile/did:...) and a Wildlife Health Starter Pack. Link to the later in the comments below. Let me know in comments if you work in the wildlife health space and would like to be included.

H5N1 HPAI avian influenza has now been reported from the sub-Antarctic. This spread is not unexpected, but unfortunately, makes it ever so more likely that it will spread to Australia, quite possibly from south. Remember to report suspicious deaths or disease in birds and mammals if you observe them

🧪Some interesting information on planned release of genetically modified mosquitoes in Queensland, Australia. Written by a scientist who works on mosquito-associated disease control. www.facebook.com/share/v/164a...

"Current rates of biodiversity loss jeopardise the long-term sustainability of human health, food production, water supply, the economy, climate resilience and our Australian way of life". Read the pre-election report by the Biodiversity Council: biodiversitycouncil.org.au/resources/sa...

Relatively cheap and simple weak links made from latex can be an effective and safe way to improve radio collar safety and facilitate drop off in kangaroo research. www.publish.csiro.au/ZO/ZO24018

There are just over two weeks left to get your abstract in for the in-person track of the WDA 2025 annual international conference in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, July 27 to August 1, so there's no time to waste. www.wda2025.com

We conducted necropsies southern brown bandicoots, an endangered species, found dead in southern Victoria. Most of them had been hit by cars or killed by an invasive predator (cat or fox). One was infected with Toxoplasma gondii. Anthropogenic impacts on wildlife health. doi.org/10.1111/avj....

🎉 Interesting opportunity for a PhD in Disease Ecology and Epidemiology. 🐗🦇🐨 www.sydney.edu.au/scholarships...

On the one hand, the government is spending more conservation money on koalas than most (any?) other species; on the other hand, vast areas of koala habitat are destroyed without government intervention (or even with approval). Does anyone else see a problem here? www.abc.net.au/news/science...

An exciting collaboration with our German colleague Gabor Czirjak at IZW in Berlin. Anna’s project is part of a larger ARC Linkage project on the vulnerability of Australian bats to white nose syndrome.

As Los Angeles combusts, 2024 is declared Earth’s hottest on record theconversation.com/as-los-angel...

New article in Bird Study: “Declines in UK breeding populations of seabird species of conservation concern following the outbreak of high pathogenicity avian influenza (HPAI) in 2021–2022” 1/3

For those interested, my lecture for the University of Sydney Infectious Diseases Institute “The global expansion of H5N1 highly pathogenic avian influenza” is available here on YouTube. It is from May 2024, but is still pertinent. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImFD...

I’ve begun a Wildlife Health Starter Pack, however, I’m very aware it’s probably missing lots of great people working in this space. If you know of any that are on Bluesky and should be included, please let me know! go.bsky.app/6T9kYR2

🧪Looking back at what was a great conference by the Wildlife Disease Association. If you have a professional interest in wildlife and wildlife health, consider joining our community of passionate professionals. youtu.be/J2pa4XHHeTA?...

Congratulations Brett Gardner, on officially being a Doctor of Philosophy! Brett worked on infectious causes of abortion in Australian fur seals and was the first to show Q-fever infections in marine mammals in the south hemisphere.