Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Dickson Despommier, Alan Dove, and Rich Condit
The entire TWiV family reviews the latest ideas about colony collapse disorder of honeybees, and resurgence of monkeypox in Africa.
Click the arrow above to play, or right-click to download TWiV #104 (70 MB .mp3, 97 minutes)
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Links for this episode:
- The Harvey Lectures
- Iridovirus and microsporidian linked to colony collapse disorder
- CCD discussed previously on TWiV 64, 49, and 46
- Why are they called iridoviruses?
- Iridoviruses at ViralZone
- Scientists and soldiers solve a bee mystery (NY Times, pdf)
- Edgewood research center involvement in CCD
- Resurgence of monkeypox in Africa (PNAS)
- Orthopoxvirus in Ghana
- Outbreak of monkeypox in US (MMWR)
- Goodbye smallpox vaccination, hello monkeypox
- Letters read on TWiV 104
Weekly Science Picks
Dickson – Four Fish by Paul Greenberg
Alan – Nikon Small World contest, 2010 winners
Rich – Encyclopedia of Life
Vincent – First all-digital science textbook will be free (thanks, @windsurfer)
Send your virology questions and comments to twiv@microbe.tv.
Thank you for reviewing our paper in a well balanced and reasoned manner.
A couple of minor clarifications. We did not find the Nosema/IIV pair in bees from Australia where there have not been any reports of CCD, nor in bees from a large, non-migratory operation in Montana – again one with no history of IIV.
We have seen samples where Nosema was at very high levels, yet the bees looked good. These samples lacked the IIV – but we didn’t have enough samples to justify inclusion in the article.
We are going to obtain bees from Spain, where investigators have associated Nosema with what they term CCD – but they’ve also seen an IIV – so all parties are interested in seeing whether bees in Spain have the IIV that we see in the USA.
As per bees in the USA:
Beekeepers stockpile bees for pollination, wintering in warm areas of the south and in California, not just Texas.
Bees are used to pollinate citrus.
Approximately 1.7 million colonies are needed for almonds in CA – that’s a lot of bee colonies being moved about.
Again, thanks for the discussion and review. Its good for the public to understand the process of science – as you noted, one paper does not constitute proof AND we need to address the actual IIV that we have, satisfy Koch’s Postulates.
J.J. Bromenshenk
45:43 monkeypox