Polar bears face mounting challenges in a changing, warming world, mostly related to their waning wintery wonderland habitats. But they may be increasingly infected with germs and parasites, too.
Compared to a few decades ago, polar bears living near Alaska are now more frequently exposed to five different pathogens, researchers report October 23 in PLOS ONE.
“With warming, it just allows pathogens to persist in environments they couldn’t persist in before,” says Karyn Rode, a wildlife biologist at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Alaska Science Center in Anchorage.
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