🤯 Did You Know (click to read)
Myxomatosis was initially introduced in Europe as a biological control measure for rabbits.
The introduction of myxomatosis to Europe in the 1950s devastated rabbit populations across the Iberian Peninsula. Later, rabbit hemorrhagic disease compounded losses in the 1980s and 1990s. Because the Iberian lynx depends overwhelmingly on rabbits, its numbers plummeted in tandem. Estimates suggest the lynx lost more than 80 percent of its historical range during the 20th century. Prey scarcity forced territorial expansion and increased juvenile mortality. Reproductive rates fell in areas with low rabbit density. Conservation data linked rabbit abundance directly to lynx cub survival. The collapse illustrates how disease in a prey species can cascade upward to apex predators. The lynx decline was an indirect epidemic.
💥 Impact (click to read)
This chain reaction exposed vulnerabilities in simplified ecosystems shaped by agriculture and game management. Efforts to reestablish rabbit populations became central to predator recovery policy. Disease-resistant rabbit strains were studied as part of broader conservation planning. The economic value of hunting species intersected with carnivore survival strategies. Predator conservation thus depended on veterinary epidemiology and land-use reform. The event blurred boundaries between wildlife management and public policy.
For communities in southern Spain, the near disappearance of the lynx traced back to a disease many associated primarily with rabbits. The scale inversion was unsettling: microscopic pathogens dictated the fate of a predator weighing over 10 kilograms. The collapse reframed extinction as an indirect consequence of biological globalization. It also underscored how human-mediated disease introductions reshape entire food webs. A virus altered the trajectory of a species that once roamed most of Iberia. The predator’s decline began at the cellular level.
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