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Georgia’s first wild snake with SFD confirmed
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by wls967 on August 27, 2014
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State’s first wild snake with SFD confirmed
The head of the mud snake looks crusty and scarred, as if the animal has been burned. One eye is dull white. Scales along the snake’s body are dry and sloughing off.
Snake Fungal Disease is not pretty -- not for one snake, and possibly not for populations of them.
The disease which some scientists have compared to white-nose syndrome, killer of an estimated 5.7 million bats in the U.S., was documented last month in a wild snake in Georgia.
An emaciated mud snake found by an Orianne Society volunteer in Bulloch County tested positive for Ophidiomyces ophiodiicola, a fungus consistently associated with Snake Fungal Disease. That’s the first free-ranging snake in Georgia the Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study has confirmed with Oo.
First reported from a captive black rat snake in Sparta, this disease marked by severe dermatitis has turned up in growing numbers of wild snakes in the eastern and midwestern U.S. since 2006.
The impact on wild populations is not clear. Yet, Snake Fungal Disease was implicated in a 50-percent decline in an imperiled population of timber rattlesnakes in New Hampshire.
Comparisons to white-nose are spurred by that potential, and by similarities between Ophidiomyces ophiodiicola and the white-nose fungus.
Wildlife biologist Dr. Jessica McGuire of DNR’s Nongame Conservation Section said that when studying such diseases, “You opportunistically get what data you can, and focus from there.”
Because mud snakes are so secretive, senior wildlife biologist John Jensen suggests the Georgia case could point to another troubling factor – the ease at which this disease spreads.
“I guess the take-home message is that all of our snakes may be susceptible.”
source: http://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/GADNR/bulletins/cb5c69#link_1408716407793
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