Urbanization and anticoagulant poisons promote immune dysfunction in bobcats.

ABSTRACT: Understanding how human activities influence immune response to environmental stressors can support biodiversity conservation across increasingly urbanizing landscapes. We studied a bobcat (Lynx rufus) population in urban southern California that experienced a rapid population decline from 2002-2005 due to notoedric mange. Because anticoagulant rodenticide (AR) exposure was an underlying complication in mange deaths, we aimed to understand sublethal contributions of urbanization and ARs on 65 biochemical markers of immune and organ function. Variance in immunological variables was primarily associated with AR exposure and secondarily with urbanization. Use of urban habitat and AR exposure has pervasive, complex and predictable effects on biochemical markers of immune and organ function in

SUBMITTER: Serieys LEK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5805946 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature