Biological Weapons To Control Cane Toad Invasion In Australia

[News Bot]

Published: Thu, 08 May 2008 00:00:00 EDT
Source: ScienceDaily

New research on cane toads in Northern Australia has discovered a way to control the cane toad invasion using parasites and toad communication signals. Biologists says that controlling toads has been difficult as things that kill them will often kill frogs. Professor Shine and his team studied cane toads in Queensland that lagged behind the invasion front and found they were infected with a lungworm parasite which slows down adults and, in laboratory tests, kills around 30% of baby toads.

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[cement]

Well It would be good to see the numbers drop. My last visit to Numinbah was an eyeopener. The creek beds were absolutely infested with them easily 15 to 20 toadlets per square meter.

 

[python blue]

This topic is quite a touchy topic at the moment between alot of scientists around Australia, i was talking to one of my old school teachers over the phone about it all and before she came to teach she was apart of the team working in CSIRO who designed the virus to kill the toads which would have the toads gone all together within a year or two but more studies have to be done before it can be released because of a few other governments around the world but thats an other topic, i dont see how lung worm would seriously decrease the population of them and if it did it would be extremely slow unlike the virus because most wild herps all do have lung worms and so many other parasites.

 

[Fuscus]

if it only kills 30% then the animal would soon evolve a defense. At best there would be a short term drop in numbers properly only for a few years