Wednesday, October 21, 2015

21/10/2015: Does fish-farming spread malaria?

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0137521
Image: CDC Global
Concerns about deforestation for cattle pasture in parts of the Amazon region have led to an increase in aquaculture as an alternative - often in abandoned areas originally cleared for other purposes.  

Alas, a team of Brazilian researchers have concluded that this solution may well have brought problems of its own. In a paper published on the PLOS One website, they present data which "suggest that fish farming contributes to the maintenance of high transmission levels of malaria in this region."

You'd think that ponds full of hungry fish would be the last place mosquitos could breed successfully. Sadly, this doesn’t seem to be the case: "Anopheles darlingi, the most important Neotropical malaria vector, seems to have adapted well to fish ponds, despite predation by fish juveniles." 

Read the full paper HERE.

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