Date:December 7, 2015
Source:University of California - Davis
Until recently, endangered foxes on California's Catalina Island were suffering from one of the highest prevalences of tumors ever documented in a wildlife population, UC Davis scientists have found. But treatment of ear mites appears to be helping the wild animals recover.
Roughly half of adult foxes examined between 2001 and 2008 had tumors in their ears, with about two-thirds of those malignant, according to a UC Davis study published this month in the journal PLOS ONE.
More than 98 percent of the foxes were also infected with ear mites. These mites appear to be a predisposing factor for ear tumors in the Santa Catalina Island fox.
Luckily for the foxes, the story doesn't stop there.
"We established a high prevalence of both tumors and ear mites, and hypothesized that there was something we could potentially do about it, which now appears to be significantly helping this population," said Winston Vickers, lead author of the prevalence study and an associate veterinarian with the UC Davis Wildlife Health Center at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine.
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